



THE LIBRARY 

OF 

THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED BY 

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 



A Labrador Spring 




AN EARLY SPRING ARRIVAL IN SOUTHERN LABRADOR. 

Frontispiece 



A LABRADOR 
SPRING 



BY 

CHARLES W. TOWNSEND, M. D, 

Author of ' 'Jtlong the Labrador Coast, ' ' etc. 
With Illustrations from Photographs 




BOSTON <i* DANA ESTES & 
COMPANY 4 MDCCCCX 



Copyright, 1910 
BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY 



All rights reserved 



Electrotyfed and Printed by 
THE COLONIAL PRESS 
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 



k- 
T4 



Preface 



PRESIDENT LOWELL in his inaugural address 
said to the professional man that " a firm 
grasp of some subject lying outside of his 
vocation is an advantage." The following 
chapters are the result of a five-weeks' trip 
in May and June, 1909, by one who tries to 
live up to this advice. Although that subject, 
as may be gathered from these chapters, is 
ornithology, yet it may also be gathered that all 
branches of natural history on this Labrador 
coast were a delight to the writer, and that 
human studies, both Indian and white, came 
in for a full share of his observations. And 
perhaps this is well, for, as Professor Shaler 
said, " the most of our kind are not natural- 
ists but humanists." In any event it is hoped 
that the following lines, which have been used 
by the Harvard Travellers Club, are appro- 
priate : 

v 



PREFACE 

"He traded not with luker sotted, 
He went for knowledge and he got it." 

The substance of Chapter VIII originally 
appeared in two papers published in the Auk 
in April and July, 1909, and part of Chapter 
IV, in the Auk of April, 1910, and I am indebted 
to the editor for permission to republish in 
this form. I wish to express my thanks to 
Professor M. L. Fernald and Mr. Walter Deane 
for botanical identifications, to Prof. E. C. 
Jeffrey and his assistant Mr. E. W. Sinnott 
for the photograph of the little larch and the 
photomicrograph of its cross-section, and par- 
ticularly to Mr. A. C. Bent for some of the 
illustrations and for his companionship in this 
Labrador Spring. 



VI 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

PREFACE v 

I. A LABRADOR SPRING n 

II. FROM SEVEN ISLANDS TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 36 

III. AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 64 

IV. THE COURTSHIPS OF SOME LABRADOR BIRDS 83 

V. THE CRUISE OF " LA BELLE MARGUERITE " 

FROM ESQUIMAUX POINT TO NATASHQUAN 103 

VI. THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS . . . 130 

VII. THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS .... 149 

VIII. WINGS AND FEET IN THE AIR AND UNDER 

WATER 180 

IX. SOME LABRADOR TREES 206 

X. SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 220 

INDEX 251 



vn 



List of Illustrations 



PAGB 

AN EARLY SPRING ARRIVAL IN SOUTHERN LABRADOR 

(See page i^'f) Frontispiece 
MOUNTAIN SAXIFRAGE ON LIMESTONE CLIFFS OF ES- 
QUIMAUX ISLAND 17 

NEARER VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN SAXIFRAGE . . 17 
SNOWBANK AND VEGETATION JUNE 4 . . . .30 

SNOWBANK AND VEGETATION JUNE 13 ... 30 

INDIAN MOTHER AND TEN DAYS' OLD INFANT . . 37 

THE TOWN OF SEVEN ISLANDS 37 

HUDSON'S BAY POST OF MINGAN. MOUNTAIN RIDGE 

IN THE DISTANCE 45 

THE BARRIER MOUNTAIN RIDGE BACK OF MINGAN 

SHOWING POISED BOULDER 45 

THE BEST HUNTER OF THE TRIBE, JUST BACK FROM 

THE NORTHWEST RIVER 50 

A MONTAGNAIS COUPLE AT MlNGAN .... 50 

INDIAN MOTHER AND CHILD AT MINGAN ... 60 
TOADSTOOL - SHAPED LIMESTONE ROCKS AT ESQUI- 
MAUX ISLE ......... 60 

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FISHING SEASON ... 73 
THE PROCESSION AT THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI 

AT ESQUIMAUX POINT 78 

ix 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

RAISING THE HOST AT THE " REPOSITORY " 78 
RETURNING TO THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE AT THE 

FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI 82 

NEST OF GREAT BLACK - BACKED GULL ... 86 

NEST OF EIDER DUCK 86 

ENTRANCE TO PUFFIN BURROW, BALD ISLAND . . 96 
WATER WORN LIMESTONE ROCKS AT BALD ISLAND. 

NESTING SHELVES FOR RAZOR - BILLED AUKS . 96 

" LA BELLE MARGUERITE " AND OUR GALLANT CREW 105 

MATHIAS AND MARTIAL AND THE BEAVER . . . 115 

THE BEAVER SKIN , . .' 115 

A CORNER OF A CORMORANT ROOKERY AT SEAL ROCK 12^ 

NEST AND EGGS OF DOUBLE - CRESTED CORMORANT . 125 
A BLACK Fox PARK AT PIASHTE - BAI . . .136 
PIASHTE - BAI RIVER AND LAKE FROM THE BEGINNING 

OF THE HIGH LAND OF THE INTERIOR . . 136 

THREE LITTLE INDIAN GIRLS 143 

TWO MONTAGNAIS COMPANIONS AT MlNGAN . -143 
INDIANS SHAVING SEAL SKIN AT THE ISLES DES COR- 

NEILLES . . . ... . . . 154 

THE PAPOOSE . . , ' . . . . . 154 

WIGWAM IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION AT MINGAN 157 

COMPLETED WIGWAM 157 

WIGWAM AND INDIAN FAMILY AT PIASHTE - BAI . 159 

INDIANS AT THE ISLES DES CORNEILLES . . . 159 

LOADING THE CANOE 163 

THE EMBARKATION OF THE MONTAGNAIS AT NATASH- 

QUAN FOR MUSQUARRO . . . . . 163 
OUR HOST, THE SALMON - FISHER AT MINGAN, AND 

His OLD COMPANION 170 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

MR. J. A. WILSON, FACTOR AT THE H. B. C. POST 

AT MlNGAN, ON THE STEPS OF THE COMPANY'S 

HOUSE BUILT BY MR. DONALD ALEXANDER SMITH, 

NOW LORD STRATHCONA AND MONT ROYAL . 170 

THE LAST LEAF ON THE TREE, SAID TO BE 104 YEARS 

OLD 179 

MY ESCORT AMONG THE INDIANS AT MINGAN . .190 
PIERRE OF PIASHTE - BAI AND THE BEAVER, SHOWING 
WEBBED HIND FOOT OF THE BEAVER, AND 

" SKIN BOOTS " OF MAN 197 

DWARFED SPRUCES DEAD AND ALIVE AT ESQUIMAUX 

ISLAND 205 

ANCIENT LARCH AT QUATACHOO 205 

LARCH TREE SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, FROM BOG AT 

ESQUIMAUX ISLAND; SLIGHTLY ENLARGED . . 211 
PHOTOMICROGRAPH OF SECTION OF TRUNK SHOWING 

SIXTEEN ANNUAL RINGS 211 

THE OLD SALMON - FISHER OF MINGAN TENDING 

His NETS 221 

THE MINGAN RIVER BACK OF THE H. B. C. POST . 227 

NEST OF THE PIGEON HAWK 227 

FALLS OF THE MINGAN 235 

THE ROMAINE RIVER NORTH OF ESQUIMAUX POINT 235 

FALLS OF PIASHTE - BAI RIVER 243 

NEAR THE FOOT OF THE FALLS ..... 243 
BOG ENCROACHING ON POOL AND FOREST ENCROACH- 
ING ON BOG 248 

SPRUCE FOREST, SNOW - BANK AND THE RIVER OF THE 

CROW . . . 248 



A Labrador Spring 



CHAPTER I 

A LABRADOR SPRING 
" Come, gentle Spring, ethereal Mildness, come." Thomson. 

OOME years ago in Labrador in late July, 
I was interested to see within the space 
of a few yards all stages of the seasons from 
mid-winter to mid-summer. In the shelter 
of a rugged cliff was a snow-drift as white and 
devoid of life as winter itself. At its edge, for 
the space of a few inches, the ground was bare 
and brown; grasses and procumbent willows 
showed no evidence of life. A little further 
away the first signs of spring were visible in the 
swelling buds of the willows ; a few feet further 
and one came on the bake-apple and Labrador 
tea in bud; still further removed in space 
from grim winter, they were as much in blos- 
som as in mid-summer, while at a distance of 

11 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

three or four yards more, the ripening berries 
of autumn could be found. Here was no 
need of long journeys to pass from winter to 
summer, nor of long tarrying in one place for 
the seasons to pass. The melting snow-drift, 
the brief spring and the short arctic summer 
condensed all the seasons in space and time. 

Spring is a long process in New England. 
From the first appearance of the blue-bird 
and skunk cabbage in early March or even 
in late February, to the departure of the last 
black-poll warbler for the north and the falling 
of the apple blossoms in early June, spring 
dallies along the way for over three months. 
Not only does spring dally in this temperate 
region, but, in its early progress, it sustains 
frequent interruptions eruptions one might 
call them if that hot word can be used in a 
cold sense of winter. 

I have always longed to watch the arrival 
of spring in the country, but to absent oneself 
from one's duties for over three months is 
plainly out of the question. The northern 
spring, however, has its advantages in these 
hustling times; it is a hustler itself. The 
change from mid-winter to mid-summer is so 

12 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

brief that northern regions are said to have no 
spring. The whole glorious ecstasy of burst- 
ing buds and migrating birds is concentrated 
into the space of a few weeks or even days. 
As the bake-apple springs into flower when 
the snowbank melts, so does spring burst 
upon the scene in these regions when winter 
departs. 

It was with great eagerness therefore that 
I explored the country on my arrival at Es- 
quimaux Point in southern Labrador on May 
24th for signs of spring, fearing that I might 
be too late, and that the summer had already 
come. Fortunately it was a tardy season 
and all was still wintery. Cartwright in his 
Labrador journal of May 21, 1771, one hundred 
and thirty-eight years and three days before, 
made this record: "The first green leaf ap- 
peared to-day, which was a currant/* I found 
some wild currant x bushes but they were only 
in bud and the leaves did not appear until a 
few days later. The alders still kept their 
buds closed, but they had already begun to 
hang out their " golden curls," and the yellow 

1 The scientific names of the birds and plants will be 
found in the Index after the common names. 

13 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

pollen floated on the pools of water that came 
from the dwindling snowbanks. Snowbanks 
were everywhere, the largest often on the 
warmest or southern slopes, a paradox that 
could be explained by the fact that in the 
southern lees, the snow, driven by the pre- 
vailing northerly gales of winter, had accumu- 
lated to great depths, and, although exposed 
to more sunlight, took longer to melt than 
did the smaller banks on the wind-swept 
northern exposures. The larch and the canoe 
birch, the mountain ash, and the red osier 
were all bare and wintery, but on the ground 
an occasional fresh grass blade, or the bud 
of the cow parsnip, Cartwright's " alex- 
ander," could be found. 

The presence of such arctic birds as snow- 
buntings, making the green spruces look like 
Christmas trees when they perched on their 
branches, added to the wintery aspect of the 
scene, and although the hardier summer birds 
like the robin, fox sparrow, Lincoln's sparrow, 
white -throated and white-crowned sparrows 
had arrived and were in full song, most of the 
summer residents were still tarrying farther 
south, and had been passed during our more 

14 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

rapid railroad migration to the north. I 
breathed a sigh of relief at the result of this 
hasty survey of the situation, for I had arrived in 
time, and in the next four weeks I was to be 
present at the rapid change from winter to 
summer, at the miracle of the Labrador 
spring. 

Although there were no fresh green leaves 
to be seen, there was no absence of this colour 
in vegetation, and it was not limited to the 
cone-bearing trees to which the name evergreen 
is usually limited. These latter are quickly enu- 
merated, namely the black, white and a few red 
spruces, the balsam fir and two kinds of ground 
juniper, for there were no pines in this region, 
and spruce and fir were by far the prevailing 
trees. On the ground of the bogs or barrens, 
which extend their vegetation into the spruce 
forests, the universal sphagnum moss as well 
as many other mosses were evergreen. As 
the various lichens which abound in Labrador 
assume every colour of the rainbow, some of 
these also were green. Clumps of pitcher-plant 
leaves were everywhere in the bogs, looking 
often as fresh and intact as if they had been pre- 
served in a green-house, instead of lying buried 

15 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

under the snow for seven long months. Many 
of these, however, merged from green to red, 
to magenta and deep mahogany colour. The 
dark green shining leaves of the goldthread 
also came out intact from the cold storage 
of winter, and the laurel and Labrador tea 
formed great clumps of colour which shaded 
off from pale olive green to dark brown. 
Another abundant evergreen in the bogs 
was the cassandra or leather-leaf, pale green 
and silvery in colour with drooping leaves, 
while the andromeda, undismayed by the long 
winter, carried its dark green, narrow leaves 
erect. These last two and the laurel were in 
full blossom by the end of the third week in 
June, but now were blossomless. 

In the woods the dwarf cornel came out from 
the winter with leaves intact, but blushing 
deep red, while, forming a carpet with its 
tiny green leaves and running branches, was 
everywhere the snowberry, appropriately 
called Mogenes, or born of the snow. Another 
broad leaf evergreen to be found especially 
on gravelly open places near the shores, and 
one which, prone on the ground, spread like 
great mats over several square feet of surface, 

16 




MOUNTAIN SAXIFRAGE ON LIMESTONE CLIFFS OF ESQUIMAUX ISLAND. 




NEARER VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN SAXIFRAGE. 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

was the bearberry. This also came into 
flower before we left. 

Although not a new leaf bud had opened, 
there was one conspicuous exception to the 
flowerless vegetation, and this was the moun- 
tain saxifrage which grew in great abundance 
on the limestone cliffs of Esquimaux Island. 
It is a tufted moss-like plant, the leaves ever- 
green and inconspicuous, but the flowers, of a 
wonderful shade of pink, so crowded the ends 
of the short stems that they formed glorious 
masses of colour, hanging in festoons from the 
cliffs or studding the rocks in great bosses. 
It was in full flower when we first discovered it 
on May 25th, and it exhaled a fragrance like 
that of the trailing arbutus, but much more 
delicate. 

Another sign of spring was the continued 
trilling of toads which greeted my ears that first 
evening at the Pointe aux Esquimaux, - 
a sound which is always associated in my mind 
with pussy willows and a brown, wet country- 
side, but with the glorious promise of bright 
flowers, migrating birds and the coming of sum- 
mer. Although this sound is at times almost 
overpowering in its intensity in New England 

17 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

where toads abound, it is rarely noticed ex- 
cept by the initiated, and to those who have 
not consciously heard it, it is rather difficult 
to describe. Gadow speaks of this love-song 
of the toad, for love-song it certainly is, as 
" a peculiar little noise, something like the 
whining bleat of a lamb." As most people 
appear to be deaf to the bird notes and even 
bird songs that may actually fill the air about 
them, so are they also, but to an even greater 
degree, deaf to this humble music of the toad ; 
a song which, from its association with the 
season at least, has its charms. The louder 
and better known notes of the hylas were 
absent on these shores. 

In these northern regions spring advances 
by bounds, and the saying that " nature 
never makes leaps " was certainly contra- 
dicted by an experience on the eleventh day of 
June. On this day, while we were eating our 
dinner on the banks of the Romaine River, 
enjoying the wonderful beauty of the scene, lis- 
tening to the undertone of the rapids and the 
incisive song of the redstart, and breathing 
in the aromatic, incense-like perfume of the 
alder catkins, a birch, released by the melting 

18 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

of the snow, suddenly leaped up to greet the 
sun. It was still bare as in winter, but in a 
few days it would be clothed with the fresh 
green that its recently escaped companions had 
already assumed. 

Birches and especially alders accommodate 
themselves to the winter snows, and submis- 
sively bend before them, but with the coming 
of summer their bonds melt away and they 
arise unharmed from their supine position. 
In this winter pressure the birch very rarely 
breaks, the alder, almost never. Not so the 
spruce, the larch and the fir, and green-stick 
fractures of these trees abound, and sometimes 
in the lee of a bank where the snow settles 
in deep, heavy masses, these trees show the 
scars of many winters by a series of partial 
breaks. In some of these the trunk assumes 
a position at right angles with its original 
growth, and parallel with the ground; in 
other cases the trunk points downward at first, 
but in any event, unless fatally wounded, the 
tree again aspires, only to be beaten down 
again perchance in another winter. Around 
the breaks calli in the form of rounded 
masses of wood form just as they do about 

19 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

broken bones, until the tree presents a woe- 
fully crooked and crippled appearance. One 
of these warty calli as big as a man's head 
was shown me at Natashquan, where it had 
been preserved as a curiosity. The difficulties 
of Labrador tree-life are great! 

Perhaps the most active week in this brief 
spring drama was that of the third to the tenth 
of June. On the third I found white violets 
covering a sunny bank hitherto bare, while 
a few marsh mangolds, their bright yellow 
flowers contrasting well with their dark, almost 
black leaves, appeared on the edges of a brook 
fed by a snowbank. Near by a few ferns were 
pushing up their " fiddle-heads " from the 
rich mould, and the cow parsnip was sending 
up its buds of folded leaves beside the gigantic 
dead stalks which had survived the winter 
storms. The dwarf willows and birch were trying 
to show green in their leaf-buds, and the larger 
buds of the mountain ash were slowly unfolding. 
On the next day I found the first white flower 
of the goldthread, and on the fifth the cur- 
rant, the first shrub to leaf out, was in blossom. 

June 7th was a red letter day in the spring 
calendar. The red osier, hitherto so bereft 

20 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

of foliage, but noticeable by its red and green 
stems, began to thrust out its opposite, pointed 
leaf-buds, canoe birch leaves were half out, 
the fiddle-heads were unfolding, and, like 
magic, groups of tiny orchids had sprung into 
being. This orchid, a calypso, with its broad, 
rounded leaf rose two or three inches from the 
moss, each plant bearing a single flower, 
a five rayed one, between pink and purple 
in colour, with a brilliant gold spot on the 
delicately veined lip. One is apt to associate 
orchids with tropical or at least warm climates 
only, but this little orchid extends its range 
from Labrador to Alaska. Near where I first 
found this orchid on Esquimaux Island, there 
were numerous arrivals among the birds, for the 
night before had been a favourable one for 
migration, and small birds that feed by day 
must of necessity use the night for migration. 
The association of orchids, spruce forests, 
snowbanks, magnolia warblers and redstarts 
certainly seemed an unusual one, and I satis- 
fied my enjoyment of the incongruous by 
following a redstart until his brilliant red and 
black plumage was set off by a background 
of dark spruces and white snow. 

21 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Another flower, almost as charming as the 
orchid, I found for the first time on this day, 
springing up from its procumbent mass of 
dark, evergreen foliage, the mountain avens 
or dryas, a rock nymph rather than a wood 
nymph, however, for it grew on the scanty 
soil of the limestone ledges close to the 
sea. The leaves are arrow-head shaped, 
dark, shining green above, white below, while 
the flowers, growing in abundance on short 
erect stems, open their lovely white cups, 
like single roses, to the sky. Where the buds 
of these conspicuous flowers were hidden 
but a week before, I do not know, although 
I had collected and pressed this pretty 
evergreen without even suspecting that it 
would be covered with conspicuous flowers a 
week later. The mountain avens extends its 
range through arctic America even to Green- 
land. 

Another exceedingly pretty little flower, a 
lilac coloured one, that sprang up on the lime- 
stone rocks at this time, was especially notice- 
able on account of its leaves which were cov- 
ered with a white powder below. This was a 
variety of the mealy primrose, and, curiously 

22 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

enough, this variety had never been found 
east of the Rocky Mountains before. 

As in the Doone valley so here in Labrador 
the words of John Ridd were appropriate, for 
" the spring was in our valley now, creeping 
first for shelter slyly in the pause of the bluster- 
ing wind. . . . There she stayed and held 
her revel, as soon as the fear of frost was gone ; 
all the air was a fount of freshness, and the 
earth of gladness, and the laughing waters 
prattled of the kindness of the sun." 

On this day also a snowbank which had cov- 
ered a steep slope of Esquimaux Island, and 
into which I had plunged to my waist in as- 
cending to the higher land on May 25th, was 
now breathing its last. I use this metaphor ad- 
visedly, for much of the snow must disappear 
by evaporation, and what melts does not all 
stream down the hillside, but is largely absorbed, 
as if in a great sponge, by the lichens and mosses. 
These plants fulfil here the boy's definition 
of a sponge as the only article with a bottom 
full of holes that holds water. It is not, how- 
ever, fair to say that these mosses had no 
bottom, for, during the spring at least, they 
are underlaid by hard ice. For example, on 

23 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

June ist in a bog near the Natashquan River 
I found ice everywhere about eight inches 
below the surface of the moss. In a space where 
there was no moss, and the dark brown, almost 
black surface of the peaty mud attracted the 
sun's rays, the ice was ten inches down. On the 
same day in the lee of a bank a hundred feet 
above the sea, the sun felt hot and the thermom- 
eter registered 76 when exposed directly to its 
rays. In the shade the temperature was 47, 
and at a depth -of eleven inches in sandy, 
peaty soil, all was hard frozen, and the ther- 
mometer registered 32. No wonder vegeta- 
tion, with such a cold region about its roots, 
was tardy in its appearance. 

On June nth near the Romaine River back 
of Esquimaux Point I found the ice surface 
ten inches beneath the moss in the bogs where 
the surface was dry, while in wet places the 
ice was sometimes twice as far away from the 
surface, and in the mudholes and ponds, with 
the sticks at hand I could find no hard ice 
bottom at all. My friend remarked, in a mildly 
sarcastic manner, as we were resting in one 
of these endless Labrador bogs, that when 
there were no birds in sight, and I had col- 

24 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

lected all the botanical specimens within reach, 
and had noted down all my observations, I 
had always one resource left, I could dig 
for ice. 

My last exploration in this direction was 
made on the 2ist of June. In a bog part way 
up the mountains above the falls of the Mingan 
River, I cut out a triangular piece of sphagnum 
with my sheaf knife, and proceeded to dissect 
the peaty soil below, and excavate it by hand. 
Our Indian guide, who could not speak a word 
of either English or French, gravely watched 
the proceedings as I gradually dug until my 
arm was inserted in the hole to the elbow. 
At this depth the ground was very cold, but 
I could feel no ice even with my knife-blade 
thrust below. I then solemnly replaced the 
triangular piece of sphagnum at the top of the 
hole, and the Indian and I silently resumed 
our march. I have often wondered whether 
he thought I was seeking for gold, was per- 
forming a religious ceremony or was merely a 
little crazy. 

Perhaps the most notable arrival of south- 
erners on the day of the orchid and mountain 
dryad, this glorious seventh of June was 

25 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

a kingbird we saw at Esquimaux Island. 
Now the kingbird is a very familiar and com- 
monplace bird in New England, but it rarely ex- 
tends its range to these boreal regions if we 
can judge by the fact that no one but Audubon 
had recorded it for southern Labrador before. 
But on the last day of this week, June loth, 
a day when my thermometer recorded the 
highest temperature at noon, 62 in the shade, 
although it was but 44 in morning and 48 
at night, a day when I found the first bake- 
apple flower, the shechootai of the Indians, 
a burst of summer appeared in the form of 
delightful little flycatchers that at once took 
possession of all the alder thickets. The 
flycatcher family is a confusing one, and even 
the great Audubon was not infallible in this 
direction. For example, he says in his " Birds 
of America " of the wood pewee: " I have seen 
them in Labrador," and on June 22, 1833, at 
American Harbour near Natashquan he says 
in his journal : " I heard a wood pewee." Now 
the wood pewee is more southern in its range, 
and Audubon was ignorant of the existence 
of the yellow-bellied flycatcher, which was 
first named by Baird some ten years later, and 

26 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

which has a sweet, gentle whistling note re- 
sembling very much one of the notes of the 
wood pewee. 

Bird songs are believed to be developments 
from call-notes. In some cases this is very 
evident. The European house sparrow repeats 
its nerve-racking call-note so continuously, and 
with such evident purpose on spring mornings, 
that a thoughtful observer must admit that 
this repetition constitutes the bird's love-song. 
In other birds this connection is less evident, but 
the evolution of the song can often be detected. 
The wood pewee, by the irony of scientific fate 
although technically classed among the non- 
singing birds, has developed from its sweet and 
simple whistling call-note a delightfully com- 
plicated and truly musical composition, which, 
without question, deserves the name of a song. 
This in its delightful entirety is only vouch- 
safed in the full ecstasy of passion. A first 
cousin of the wood pewee, a bird that resembles 
it as closely as the proverbial peas resemble 
each other, has a very different song, which 
indeed as a musical performance has no claim 
to the name of song. This bird the least 
flycatcher is also called the chebec from the 

27 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

distinctness and frequency with which it calls 
this incisive dissyllable in the spring. That 
this constitutes the song with which it gives 
vent to its emotions I think there can be no 
question. Its call and conversational notes 
are simple and short. Now our friend the 
yellow-bellied flycatcher, whose arrival I have 
just chronicled, a bird that is so abundant 
on this southern Labrador coast after June 
loth, has two distinct notes, one a soft, musical, 
double whistle resembling that of its cousin 
the wood pewee, and a harsh incisive je-let 
very suggestive of the chebc of its other cousin 
the least flycatcher. 

I had always supposed that this latter note 
was its song, while the whistle was merely 
a call-note, but some observations I made in 
this Labrador spring induced me to change my 
mind, and tended to throw it into some con- 
fusion on the subject. Thus I occasionally 
stole on a bird unawares who was repeating 
the sweet, double whistle at frequent intervals. 
Here I said to myself is the first stage in the 
evolution of a song, which in the course of 
ages may become similar to the delightful 
musical composition of the wood pewee, when 

28 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

the bird, suddenly becoming aware of my 
presence, changed its note to repeated ex- 
plosions of its harsh je-let, and I was con- 
vinced of the truth of my observations, and 
concluded that the je-lt was merely an alarm 
note and not a song. Unfortunately for this 
theory, all the birds did not act in the same way, 
and the same bird varied its course at different 
times, for even when unaware of my undesir- 
able presence, and in the absence of any visible 
annoyance, these flycatchers would sometimes 
repeat the ]e-l6t in a way that suggested the 
pouring out of their souls in this soulless dis- 
harmony a song not inferior to that of the 
least flycatcher, and that is saying a good deal. 
The same birds when disturbed would emit 
at times the double whistle note. I was forced 
to conclude therefore either that the yellow- 
bellied flycatcher was developing one of two 
songs, one to our ears musical, the other the 
reverse, and, in this community at least, that 
the particular song had not been determined, 
or that the bird was developing two songs. 
Let us hope that the soft and liquid whistle 
may alone survive, and be further elaborated. 
I am very sure, if the bird did but know it, his 

29 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

sweetheart would prefer this song to the harsh 
je-ltt. 

A first cousin of the bake-apple, the arctic 
raspberry, must have blossomed about this 
same time, but I did not find it until June iyth, 
when I came across great masses of the pinkish- 
purple bloom in a marsh near the Mingan River. 
Like the bake-apple, this modest raspberry 
displays but two or three leaves besides its 
blossoms, and is rarely more than two or three 
inches high. 

To return to the subject of snow and ice, I 
would mention a snowbank in a lovely wooded 
ravine near Esquimaux Point that I photo- 
graphed with its leafless surroundings on June 
4th. The region was almost birdless also, 
for although I listened for an hour at this place 
the only bird voice I heard was the hymn of the 
hermit thrush but that one song was well 
worth a full chorus of bird songs. After this, 
hermit thrushes became common, but on this 
day the song was heard for the first time in this 
Labrador spring. On my walk to and from 
the snowbank I found pipits, fox and white- 
throated sparrows, juncos and snow buntings, 
a few black-poll warblers, ruby-crowned king- 

30 




SNOWBANK AND VEGETATION JUNE 4. 




SNOWBANK AND VEGETATION JUNE 13. 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

lets and robins. On the thirteenth of June 
I again sought the ravine, and photographed 
from the same spot the much dwindled snow- 
bank around which the alders, birches and 
mountain ashes were unfolding their leaves. 
The woods were far from silent, as they had 
been nine days before. Pipits and snow bunt- 
ings had departed for more northern regions, 
but, in addition to the other birds found 
before, the woods were full of warblers. Black- 
polls were everywhere, lisping their simple, 
lazy songs; brilliant magnolia warblers and 
redstarts displayed their yellows and reds and 
blacks, and sang unceasingly; Wilson's war- 
blers, jet black in cap, elsewhere bright yellow, 
appeared undisturbed by my presence and 
sang at close range ; a rare for these parts 
Nashville warbler gave vent to the emotions 
of his heart from a clump of mountain ash 
sprouts, and, lastly, from among this gentle 
band of warblers, a Maryland yellow-throat 
not only sang from some bushes, but in the 
intensity of his passion was borne aloft to the 
level of the next terrace, and dove to earth 
again, filling the air with a confusing and sur- 
prising explosion of his calls and songs. 

31 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

In the alder thickets by the brook fed by the 
departing snows, yellow-bellied flycatchers were 
common, and the wild but tender warbling 
song of an unseen Lincoln's sparrow came 
suddenly to my ears, and, at not infrequent 
intervals, the more mechanical, ringing song 
of the winter wren burst forth. These two 
birds are about as easy to see as wood mice. 
The contrast was as great among the birds as 
in the appearance of the snowbank and the 
surrounding vegetation on these two days. 

It is difficult in these days of specialism to 
be an all-round naturalist, but one need not be 
an entomologist, if one has been in Labrador 
in summer, to be very conscious of the fact 
that in this cold, brief spring mosquitoes and 
flies were singularly conspicuous by their ab- 
sence. Although I noted two mosquitoes on 
June ist, and several on June igth, as well as 
flies, they were gentle, harmless things, and 
the cold kept down the ardour of their passion 
for human blood. In fact it was not until the 
last day June 2ist that I was attacked by 
black flies and mosquitoes, and that very feebly 
and in scanty numbers. It is interesting to 
note that Cartwright on this same day of June 

32 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

in 1771 records in his journal: "A very hot 
day, and the moschettos bit for the first time 
this year." 

For this relief many thanks! I can speak 
with feeling, for in these parts, as old Hakluyt 
puts it: " There is a kind of small fly or gnat 
that stingeth and offendeth sorely, leaving 
many red spots on the face and other places 
where she stingeth." Hakluyt happens to be 
right about the sex, for the male stingeth not. 
In another place he speaks of " certaine sting- 
ing Gnattes, which bite so fiercely that the 
place where they bite shortly after swelleth 
and itcheth very sore." But for quaintness 
of description and ingenuity of spelling, the 
following from Whitbourne, writing early in 
1600 of the Newfoundland mosquito, is per- 
haps the most satisfactory: " Onely a very 
little nimble Fly (the least of all other 
Flies), which is called a Muskeito; those Flies 
seeme to have a great power and authority 
upon all loytering and idle people that come 
to the New-found-land; for they have this 
property that, when they find any such lying 
lazily, or sleeping in the Woods, they will 
presently bee more nimble to seize upon him 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

than any Sargeant will bee to arrest a man for 
debt." 

The temperature of this Labrador spring as 
revealed by my thermometer was rather cool, 
for, as Whittier says: 

" The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade 
Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate." 

It averaged during the last part of May and 
the first part of June about 43 Far., morning 
and night, and 50 at midday in the shade. 
At night the thermometer generally went down 
to 32. During the last part of our stay in 
June the average was 46, morning and night, 
and 51 in the middle of the day. The 
highest temperature was 62 at mid-day on 
June loth. Unfortunately, like all good ex- 
plorers, I broke my thermometer on June i yth, 
so that I had no record for the last six days 
of our stay. 

Although it was often bitterly cold in the 
wind and out of the sun, it was often delight- 
fully warm when these conditions were re- 
versed, and a complete sun-bath was sur- 
prisingly free from any sensations of chilliness, 
in fact " toasty warm " even in the neighbour- 
hood of a snowbank which, by reflection, in- 

34 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

tensified the sun's rays. It is difficult to 
measure the exact value of the effect of the 
sun's rays on the bare skin, but that it is con- 
siderable is easily appreciated by those who 
have tried sun-baths, and experienced the 
pleasant sense of well-being that results. As to 
the value of a plunge in icy salt water after the 
sun-bath, that may be open to question, and 
my friend remarked that I probably enjoyed 
these baths in the same spirit as did the his- 
torical character, who employed a boy to pinch 
him in order that he might experience a com- 
fortable sense of relief when the process was 
over. However, in the language of the country, 
chacun a son gout, and my friend preferred to 
keep his clothes on, but I am inclined to think 
that a taste for these two invigorating pro- 
cedures adds a great deal to one's appreciation 
of the Labrador spring, which is certainly 
rugged, and not one of " ethereal mildness," 
as the misleading quotation at the beginning 
of this chapter might have led the gentle reader 
to infer. 



35 



CHAPTER II 

FROM SEVEN ISLANDS TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

" Backward and forward, along the shore 
Of lorn and desolate Labrador 
And found at last her way 
To the Seven Islands Bay." 

Whittier. 

most maps the name Labrador is at- 
tached only to the narrow strip under 
the jurisdiction of Newfoundland on the Atlan- 
tic coast, yet it belongs in reality to the entire 
peninsula which begins at the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence at the point where the 5oth parallel 
strikes the coast. A line drawn from this point 
to the southern extremity of Hudson Bay, or 
rather of its offshoot, James Bay, separates 
the great peninsula from the rest of Canada. 
This westernmost point of the Labrador coast 
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is about thirty 
miles to the west of Seven Islands, and about 
three hundred and fifty east of Quebec. 

As we approached the Labrador coast, after 

36 




INDIAN MOTHER AND TEN DAYS OLD INFANT. 



THE TOWN OF SEVEN ISLANDS. 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

an interesting sail down the mighty St. Law- 
rence from Quebec, we could see in the clear 
morning air the precipitous mountains of 
Gasp6, sixty miles to the south, in places white 
with snow and brilliantly illuminated by the 
morning sun, but dark in the shadows of the 
deep ravines. The whole southern coast of 
Labrador is notable for its rivers which empty 
their floods, swelled in the spring by the melting 
snows, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The 
first of these is the St. Marguerite River, which, 
like nearly all these rivers, cuts through sand 
bluffs and is partly blocked by a bar extending 
part way across the mouth from the east. The 
town of about a dozen houses is perched on 
the western bank with a setting of dark spruce 
forest. 

The bay of Seven Islands is of great beauty 
and forms a nearly circular basin some four 
miles in diameter, and almost completely land- 
locked. Seven mountainous islands, of which 
the highest is Great Boule, block the entrance, 
rising abruptly from the water to a height of 
500 to 700 feet, granitic, rounded, glacier- 
smoothed, yet well forested in places with dark 
spruces. The birch trees, bare and leafless 

37 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

when we steamed east along the coast, were in 
full leaf on our return, and dotted the dark 
forest with light green spots. 

On the extreme left of the bay, as one faces 
north, under some hills which match the islands 
in height, was a clearing on the edge of the for- 
est, occupied by the motley buildings of a whale 
factory, a familiar sight to one who has been 
on the eastern Labrador coast or in Newfound- 
land. A little further in the bay was a wharf 
piled with bales of white wood-pulp, which had 
been brought by rail from Clark City lying 
concealed in the forest some nine miles inland. 
This " city " is a model one in many ways, 
steam-heated and electric lighted, although its 
effect on the forest is not pleasant to contem- 
plate, yet I was told that proper forestry meth- 
ods were employed, so that the land was not 
left entirely destitute, and the continued 
growth of the forest was assured. From the 
wharf the bay sweeps around in a lovely even 
curve of white sand beach, backed by the eter- 
nal spruce forest, which stretches back to a 
mountain barrier. This bay is of interest to 
the ornithologist from the fact that thousands 
of brant rest and feed on the eel-grass there 

38 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

every spring, preparatory to their flight over- 
land of 500 miles across the broad isthmus to 
Hudson Bay. Their migration does not stop 
here, for they continue on to the far north, as 
they are not known to nest south of the 83d 
degree. This migration takes place between 
the last week of May and the first two or three 
weeks of June, and as we traversed the bay 
going east on May 24th, and returned on June 
22d, we missed the migration almost entirely, al- 
though we obtained from several hunters and 
Indian-traders a very satisfactory description 
of it. We did see, however, one laggard brant 
hurriedly flying north across the bay on June 
22d, the last of the mighty throngs that had 
preceded him. 

Jacques Cartier visited this beautiful bay in 
1539. One can imagine what his sensations 
must have been as he sailed day after day up 
this mighty gulf and river, entering as he 
thought the direct waterway to the mysterious 
East. Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote in Hakluyt's 
Voyages: " Jacques Cartier . . . heard say at 
Hochelaga in Nova Francia how that there 
was a great sea at Saguinay, whereof the end 
was not knowen: which they presupposed to 

39 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

be the passage to Cataia." Beyond Carder's 
farthest west lay China, and the rapids above 
Montreal bear the name La-Chine even to the 
present day. 

In an ancient " Discourse of divers Voyages " 
it is said that " Many haue traualed to search 
the coast of the lande of Labrador, as well to 
thintente to knowe howe farre or whyther it 
reachethe, as also whether there bee any passage 
by sea throughe the same into the Sea of Sur 
and the Islandes of Maluca, which are under the 
Equinoctial line: thinkynge that the waye 
thyther shulde greatly bee shortened by this 
vyage." Sebastian Cabot had in truth " a great 
flame of desyre " increased in his heart " to 
attempt some notable thynge " when he heard 
that " Don Christopher Colonus, Genuese, had 
discovered the coastes of India, whereof was 
great talke in all the courte of kynge Henry the 
Seunth, who then reigned : in so much that all 
men with great admiration affirmed it to bee 
a thynge more diuine then humane, to sayle 
by the Weste into the East where spices growe, 
by a way that was never knowne before." 

Cartier said that the Indians described some 
marvellous fishes that lived in the Bay of Seven 

40 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

Islands, which " had the shape of horses, spend- 
ing the night on land and the day in the sea." 
Lescarbot, writing in 1609, says these fishes 
were " hippopotami." These explorers were 
not romancing, but doubtless referred to wal- 
ruses, which in those days occurred even in this 
southern region. 

There are many interesting names connected 
with the early history of Labrador. The Cabots, 
John and his son Sebastian, take of course 
first place in 1498, and the Portuguese, Caspar 
Corte-Real is a close second in 1500. In later 
days two names that are not usually connected 
with Labrador appear. Louis Jolliet, the dis- 
coverer of the Mississippi, was an explorer of 
the Labrador coast in the latter part of the 
i yth century, and he died there about 1700. 
He married one of the daughters of Sieur Bissot 
de la Riviere, and became involved in the end- 
less disputes about the seignory of Mingan. 
A still more unexpected name to stumble upon 
in Labrador annals is that of the renowned cir- 
cumnavigator, Captain Cook. In 1759, four 
years after entering the navy, he was engaged 
in making a chart of the St. Lawrence, and in 
1764 he received a commission as marine sur- 

41 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

veyor of Newfoundland and Labrador, in which 
" arduous service he continued until the winter 
of 1767." 

To return to our own voyage : on the right 
hand or easterly extremity of the Bay of Seven 
Islands, in a narrow line between the white 
beach in front and the dark forest behind, 
stretches the town of the same name. The 
small houses all looked thrifty, brightly painted 
in white or gray with dark blue or red roofs, 
dominated by a large priests' house and a church 
with a tin-covered spire and a red roof. At the 
left hand end of the town is the Indian village 
with its smaller houses and church and numer- 
ous tall flagstaffs, and beyond is the Hudson's 
Bay Company's Post with H. B. C. in large 
letters on the roof of the store. 

In May the larger fishing boats were still for 
the most part drawn up on the sand, but, as 
soon as the steamer came to anchor a mile or so 
from the shallow beach, a crowd of smaller 
boats and canoes raced for her. In one of the 
latter with an Indian was the Hudson's Bay 
Company's factor, Dr. Ross. The steamer was 
soon boarded by a picturesque and weather- 
beaten crowd, and the usual excitement of the 

42 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

brief exchange of mail, news and merchandise 
prevailed. It reminded me of similar occasions 
on the eastern Labrador coast, but the French 
language and a certain French love of dress 
added a peculiar charm to this more southern 
region. One man, who had given rather more 
than the usual care to his apparel, appeared in 
tall yellow boots and yellow riding gloves with 
tassels, a high starched collar and a purple 
necktie. His pointed waxed moustaches gave 
the finishing Parisian touch to the picture. 

Behind the town the forest stretches to the 
range of low mountains which extend in a rocky 
wall from east to west parallel with the coast. 
This rocky barrier, the beginning of the high 
land of the interior, stretches along the entire 
southern coast that we visited from Seven 
Islands to Natashquan. In places it recedes 
many miles from the sea as at Natashquan, 
where a coastal plain of thirty or forty miles 
intervenes ; in other places it reaches the coast, 
as at Magpie. At the Moisie River it is four- 
teen miles from the sea, and at Mingan only 
three miles away. At Seven Islands, although 
the main range is several miles back of the head 
of the bay, a rocky spur comes to the sea at the 

43 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

western extremity of the bay, and forms the 
various mountainous islands that block its 
mouth. Everywhere the ridge stands up as an 
impressive rocky barrier to the view from 600 
to 1,000 feet in height, attaining in some places, 
as at Mount St. John, a few hundred feet more 
of altitude. This mountain is entered on the 
charts as 1,476 feet in height. Low, the Cana- 
dian geologist, states that several of the sum- 
mits in this belt are more than 2,500 feet above 
sea-level, and Hind found some of the mountain 
ranges about the Moisie River to be 3,000 feet 
high. 

The top of the ridge, although nearly level, 
presents rounded gaps, through which higher 
mountains can be seen. To the west of the 
Moisie River the mountains are wooded to their 
summits, while to the east of this point they 
stand up as barren rocky ridges, clothed here 
and there only with patches of forest growth. 
During the early part of our visit, snow was 
plentiful in the ravines, but it grew less towards 
the end of June. Everywhere this ridge in- 
vited and mocked us, and we longed to reach 
it, and explore its rocky fastnesses. Its barren 
appearance like that of the rocky hills further 

44 




THE BARRIER MOUNTAIN RIDGE BACK OF MINGAN SHOWING POISED BOULDER. 




HUDSON S BAY POST OF MINGAN. MOUNTAIN RIDGE IN THE DISTANCE. 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

north, and so characteristic of the eastern 
Labrador coast, suggested arctic conditions, 
and we had visions of arctic birds breeding 
there, of horned larks and pipits and possibly 
of ptarmigans. At Esquimaux Point we made 
our longest trip inland, a laborious tussle with 
the bog for five hours, yet we found ourselves 
apparently no nearer the mountains than at 
the start. According to Low the range is here 
twenty miles from the shore. 

At Mingan, however, the approach to the 
high land is short and easy. A three mile paddle 
up the swift but smooth waters of the Mingan 
River brings one to the foot of the barrier, up 
which an Indian portage path leads to Manitou 
Lake, high up in the rocky wilderness. Not un- 
til the last day of our stay at Mingan were we 
able to take this trip, and it was well worth 
taking, as it solved many questions we had 
previously asked ourselves. The first discovery 
we made was that there were traces of forest 
growth even on the tops of the ridges, as 
shown by stumps and trunks of considerable 
size. All of these, although for the most part 
smoothed and bleached by long exposure to 
the weather, showed in their crevices and in- 

45 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

tenors the black marks of fire. The ranges 
beyond, still higher for no matter how high 
we climbed on the elevated plateau there were 
always summits beyond still higher showed 
also gaunt trunks, and in places a considerable 
growth of birch and aspen where there had 
probably been a previous growth of spruce. 
Here was an explanation for the absence 
of arctic birds. The region was not arctic, al- 
though from a distance it simulated it perfectly. 
It had originally been clothed with a forest 
in which forest birds had dwelt. Mr. J. A. 
Wilson, the factor of the H. B. C. at Mingan, 
told me that a great fire had swept over this 
region forty years ago, starting hundreds of 
miles inland at the Grand or Hamilton River; 
it had reached the Gulf shore with a front over a 
hundred miles broad. Hind gives the dates of 
several great fires before this. Not only was 
the forest destroyed, but the undergrowth of 
bushes, the low herbs, and more important still, 
the mosses and lichens as well as the peaty soil 
were all licked up by the flames, exposing the 
naked framework of bed-rock and boulder. 
This soil destroyed represented the disintegrat- 
ing work of water in its solid and liquid form, 

46 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

and of vegetation working through thousands 
of years on the solid Laurentian rock that had 
been left naked and scoured by the ice of the 
last glacial period. The remains of this soil, the 
precious product of so many years, no longer 
protected by vegetation on the steep slopes, 
was soon washed down into the valleys, and 
these rocky hills are now almost as devoid of 
soil as they were when the glaciers melted. 
On the bare rock lichens are again growing 
and disintegration is gradually creeping on 
even there ; in the crevices the mosses and the 
herbs and bushes are striving to gain a foot- 
hold, and slowly a soil is being formed, which 
after many, many years will be sufficient for the 
re-growth of the Hudsonian forest of spruce 
and balsam. Verily what a great destruction 
a little fire kindleth! The mills of the gods 
grind slowly indeed in this case ! 

Here at a height of five or six hundred feet 
glacial boulders abounded, many of them poised 
on slopes of such an angle that a touch seemed 
all that was needed to disturb their equilibrium 
and send them crashing into the valley below. 
The presence of these boulders shows that the 
land here had never been submerged below the 

47 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

sea since the departure of the ice-sheet from 
the country. Elsewhere in the lowlands between 
this rocky barrier and the sea, there was every- 
where evidence of previous submersion, and 
poised glacial erratics were absent. The rocks 
on which these boulders lay were in some places 
as smooth and polished as if the glaciers had 
but just receded, and grooves and scratches 
could easily be made out. 

As in the plains the hollows are being gradu- 
ally filled with vegetation, and the water ousted 
or rather absorbed into the meshes. At a point 
in these mountains where I sat a narrow tarn 
of dark blue water lay at my feet, encroached 
upon from the north by the sphagnum bog. 
Beyond lay a bog in a broader, larger depres- 
sion between the rocks, a bog still incomplete, 
for here and there were small circular ponds. 
On the other side a still larger bog was to be 
seen covering entirely what was originally a 
lake, and no spot of water remained. One must 
not suppose that these regions were altogether 
desolate. Far from it. Great patches of bril- 
liant rhodora, varying in shade from light pink 
to dark crimson or purple, illuminated the hill- 
sides. Laurels and other members of the 

48 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

hardy heath family, dwarf cornels and bake- 
apple flowers were everywhere in profusion. 
To match these brilliant colours, a Wilson's 
warbler in dress of lemon yellow with a shining 
black cap sang from an alder thicket in the 
shelter of some rocks, while a full plumaged 
purple finch called my attention to himself 
by a rapturous flight song, which he repeated 
again and again as he fluttered upward, and 
made me believe I had never heard a purple 
finch sing so sweetly before. 

While the view to the north was barred by a 
succession of rounded mountain tops, stretching 
up gradually towards the interior of the Labra- 
dor peninsula which, according to Low, varies 
from i, 600 to i, 800 feet in height, the view to 
the south showed the great coastal plain with 
its bogs and lakes and forests, its sandy shores 
and winding rivers, its fringe of limestone 
islands, forested and still bearing here and there 
patches of pure white snow, the sparkling blue 
sea, and in the distance the blue outline of 
Anticosti. When this coast was submerged in 
the distant past so that the sea washed the bases 
of this granite barrier and entered into the 
deep valleys, a shore line similar to that of the 

49 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

present eastern coast must have been formed, 
with its numerous outlying islands, its deep 
fiords or "tickles," and its land-locked har- 
bours. 

Beyond Seven Islands stretches a long beach, 
and, cutting through high sand and gravel 
banks, the dark brown waters of the Moisie 
River pour into the Gulf. Here the steamer 
anchored two miles or more from the shore, 
and we had a chance to study the little village 
of a dozen red-roofed houses and a church 
with our glasses during the slow process of 
landing salmon casks on the beach. Moisie is 
a great salmon station and the owners of the 
mail steamer, the Holliday Brothers, catch in 
nets great quantities of this fish every spring. 

Again the beach stretched eastward, backed 
by an elevated gravel plain, mostly spruce cov- 
ered and edged with a pure white bank of snow. 
The sea was like glass, and we were treated to 
some near views of three whales. Two crossed 
our bow and spouted close at hand, displaying 
light gray backs; another swam lazily along 
on our starboard side, showing a broad upper 
jaw and long narrow dorsal fin. Off the Sag- 
uenay we had seen numbers of white whales, 

50 



THE BEST HUNTER OF THE TRIBE, JUST BACK FROM THE NORTHWEST RIVER. 




A MONTAGNAIS COUPLE AT MINGAN. 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

whose snowy forms contrasted well with the 
dark water. Once we had seen a burgomaster 
or glaucous gull of snowy whiteness fly above 
one of these, as it came to the surface, both 
white creatures looking perhaps for the same 
prey. Later in the harbour of Mingan we had 
watched some small whales sporting about, 
followed by a flock of twenty or more common 
terns, who screamed and darted down at the 
water whenever a whale appeared. 

The effect of the absence of wind on the 
loons which dotted the surface of the water was 
interesting. This bird is a powerful and swift 
flyer when he once gets under way, but as his 
wings are rather small in proportion to his 
body, it is almost impossible for him to rise 
above a flat surface without the aid of the wind 
to oppose his aeroplanes. Out of twenty or 
thirty loons disturbed by the steamer that 
afternoon only two succeeded in rising from the 
water. The others attempted to rise, and 
struggled along with both wings and feet strik- 
ing the water, going off from the steamer like 
meteors at tangents, and leaving wakes like 
boats. After a longer or shorter time, a 
quarter of a .minute to a minute as a rule, al- 

51 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

though one greatly terrified fellow kept up the 
flopping for three and three quarters min- 
utes by the watch, they would give up the 
struggle and dive, and their subaqueous de- 
parture was probably more rapid than their 
amphibious one. They reminded me of children 
who are able to walk fairly well, but, when terri- 
fied, forget their acquired art and return to a 
primitive scramble on all fours. Diving by 
loons, like walking on the hind legs by man, 
is an art of comparatively late development. 

On this same 23d of May, as we steamed east 
from Moisie, many flocks of old squaws or 
long-tailed ducks flew about us, or, rising from 
the water, mounted to a considerable height 
and flew hither and thither as if they had not 
yet made up their minds which way to go next. 
In all there must have been over a thousand 
of these beautiful ducks. The distance and 
the noise of the steamer prevented our hearing 
their voices, but they were doubtless as garru- 
lous as usual, and from their talkativeness 
they derive their names " old squaw." On 
the eastern Labrador coast they are called 
" hounds," a very appropriate name, for at 
a distance, their voices sound like those of a 

52 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

pack of hounds in full cry. It is an interesting 
and musical cry, and some of their expressions 
may be represented by the syllables ong-hic, 
and a-ond-a-lou. The Indians call these ducks 
cock-a-wee, a name doubtless suggested by 
some of their conversational calls. Now as we 
did not see any more old squaws farther east, 
and as there were none to be found here on our 
return, we concluded, and this conclusion 
was confirmed by the reports of hunters along 
the coast, that the old squaws like the brant 
migrate north over the isthmus of the Labrador 
Peninsula. 

The sun set that night in a cloudless sky, cold, 
clear, golden yellow, and the glow in the north- 
west was very slow in fading. The twilights 
are long and beautiful in these regions. 

Issuing from a dark ravine the Riviere 
Blanche pours its white cataract of waters 
almost directly into the sea, and in the distance 
in the forest the mist arising from the great falls 
of the Manitou River can be seen. The next 
stop was made by the steamer at Grand or 
Sandy River, a desolate rocky and sandy spot 
where a score of unpainted houses and a small 
gray church cling desperately to their mooring. 

53 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

and appreciated him. Now one day there 
passed along this road a stranger on the march 
for the Hudson's Bay Post of Mingan, an elderly 
man of timid disposition, and ignorant of the 
customs of the Magpie ox, and indeed not 
familiar with any horned cattle. 

As he approached the bridge that crosses 
the river near the cascade, he perceived the ox 
grazing by the roadside, and quickened his 
pace, for he did not relish such close proximity 
to a great beast with long horns, and these 
with such sharp points. Our friend the ox 
stops grazing and steps out rather quickly 
in order to say bon jour, so to speak, to the 
traveller. He, poor man, starts to run to es- 
cape what he believes to be an animal with 
vicious intentions, and to his terror the beast 
runs after him. Away they go, faster and 
faster, down the hill towards the bridge. Just 
before reaching this point, the road turns 
sharply to the left at the river's brink. The 
man, terrified as he is, has enough wits left to 
take the turn successfully, and gains the bridge, 
but the ox in the ardour of his desire for social 
intercourse, and the slowness of his mind and 
of his huge bulk, is unable to turn quickly 

56 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

enough, but crashes through the single rail 
over the bank down down down 
like a plongeur into the Magpie River. 

The good man relieved of the pursuit of this 
ravenous beast, but trembling like a leaf in 
every limb, tells his beads and gives thanks to 
the bon Dieu. Across the bridge he goes, but 
he is suddenly struck stiff with horror at the re- 
appearance of the ox, who, having arisen from 
his plunge, like a veritable plongeur that he is, 
has swum the river and clambered out on the 
rocks of the opposite shore. 

At this point in the story the trader, like a 
good raconteur, suddenly ceased his tale with 
arms wide spread and an expression of horror 
in his face. None of us asked what happened 
next, but he confidentially assured me on the 
following day that the story was entirely and 
exactly true. 

The St. John River,, about a hundred miles 
from Seven Islands, is the next stopping point, 
and, while we anchored, boats with red sails 
came out to greet us. The town is built on 
the lowest of three sandy terraces on the right 
bank of the great river, which is blocked at 
the mouth by a sand-bar extending half way 

57 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

across from the east, behind which are shel- 
tered the fishing boats. Back of the little vil- 
lage with its faded pink church was a great 
cross on the bleak hillside, and in the distance, 
about a dozen miles from the sea, Mount 
St. John, looking as if it had split open and 
fallen apart, stood up blue and snow flecked. 

Again more beach and Long Point was 
reached, a flat sandy place, a not inconsiderable 
village abounding in fishing boats, but destitute 
of a harbour. Some of the houses were of logs, 
others clapboarded and neatly painted pea- 
green, yellow or slate with red roofs. There 
were two churches, a large new one evidently 
to replace the old one. Behind stretched the 
eternal forest of pointed firs and spruces, and 
the grim barrier of rock, blue, gray and white, 
brought up the rear. Men pushed out through 
the surf to meet the steamer, while boys and 
mongrel dogs waited on the beach. About 
six miles off Long Point on one of the Perro- 
quet islands is a lighthouse. 

The Perroquets were formerly the nesting- 
places of countless puffins, razor-billed auks 
and gannets. Now these birds are all gone ex- 
cept a few pairs of puffins and possibly a razor- 

58 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

billed auk or two. Lucas, who visited the 
islands in 1887, found "a few Gannets in 
spite of the incessant persecution of the Indians 
who regularly make a clean sweep there." 
The persecution continued and no gannets have 
nested there for fifteen years. The birds have 
a sentimental attachment for the spot, how- 
ever, and visit it every year, and on June 2ist 
we saw about thirty of these splendid birds fly- 
ing near the island. 

Of an entirely different character from the 
forlorn little villages we had passed was the 
trig settlement of Mingan, some six miles be- 
yond Long Point, protected from the sea by 
a wooded island which shelters a deep sound. 
The dominating feature here was the Hudson's 
Bay Company's Post neatly fenced and painted 
as all these posts are. This was flanked on the 
west by the Indian village, and on the east by 
the substantial house of a salmon fisherman, 
where we made our home during the latter part 
of June for a week. 

While the Seven Islands are granitic, and 
rise steeply to rounded summits, the group of 
Mingan Islands which begins off Long Point at 
the Perroquets and extends for fifty miles to St. 

59 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Genevieve Island are flat-topped and com- 
posed of light gray limestone, whose strata 
are nearly horizontal but dip slightly to the 
west and south. These islands vary in size 
from those of an acre or two in extent like the 
Perroquets, which rise but a few feet above the 
water, to those of ten or fifteen miles in cir- 
cumference, like Esquimaux Island, with cliffs 
seventy-five or one hundred feet high. 

All display the effect of the wear of the ocean 
on the limestone cliffs, which are often hollowed 
and turreted in a curious manner. In places 
great caverns are formed by the waves; in 
others rounded pillars are the predominant 
features, and, owing to the varied resistance 
of the strata, these pillars sometimes assume 
strange shapes. If the harder layers are in the 
middle, the pillars become worn above and be- 
low, and a series of spinning-top shaped masses 
line the shore. In other places, where the 
denser layers are on top, the wear results in 
toadstool forms which sometimes extend for 
considerable distances along the water front. 
In many ways these limestones reminded me 
of the water-worn ice formation seen on the 
eastern Labrador coast. 

60 








TOADSTOOL-SHAPED LIMESTONE ROCKS AT ESQUIMAUX ISLE. 




INDIAN MOTHER AND CHILD AT MINGAN. 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

In other places the immediate shore is a 
flat shelf of limestone, smoothed, polished and 
grooved by the glaciers of long ago. Many of 
these grooves are shallow, rounded depres- 
sions several yards wide, extending south into 
the sea, and slightly sloping in that direction. 
So smooth and uniform are these shelves, that 
they would make perfect slips for whale fac- 
tories ; all that is needed is a tackle on the land, 
a whale in the water, and the thing is complete. 
In some places, however, this fresh polished 
surface is marred by numerous little hollows 
which suggest selective solvent power of water 
on some of the ingredients of the stone. In 
other places the limestone is cracked and broken 
off in square blocks suitable for house building, 
or in smaller fragments making pebbly beaches. 

As the islands are all alike in a way, a de- 
scription of Esquimaux Island, which we fre- 
quently visited from the village of Esquimaux 
Point, will do for all. This island is separated 
by a sound three quarters of a mile wide from 
Esquimaux Point, and is of irregular outline 
with numerous deep bays. On June 3d we had 
a splendid opportunity to study the limestone 
formations of the island, for we walked around 

61 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

its entire coast line, and concluded that al- 
though the island was only about three miles in 
diameter, its periphery with all the sinuosities 
measured at least fifteen miles. My friend be- 
lieves the distance is much greater, and as we 
walked without stopping the last four hours, 
after we had already gone a considerable part 
of the way, I am inclined to think he is right. 
Granite rocks are soft in comparison with these 
hard, marble-like limestones, and the effect 
on my hob-nailed shoes was disastrous. It was 
hard walking, and I was reminded of the saying, 
" Hit hisn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'oss, 
hit's the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard 
'igh way.'* 

The cliffs on the eastern end of the island 
are particularly fine, and in one of the inacces- 
sible hollows an ancient nest of a raven was to 
be seen, made up of a multitude of weather- 
worn sticks piled up and woven together to a 
mass the size of a clothes basket. Although the 
ravens were said to breed there every year, we 
saw no signs of them on our visits. It was evi- 
dent, however, that a few black guillemots or 
sea pigeons were nesting in the deep crevices 
of these cliffs, for they often flew out on our 

62 



TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 

approach and swam nervously about in the 
water outside. Everywhere the water was 
dotted with eider ducks. 

The centre of the island consists of tangled 
forests and sphagnum bogs, and differs in no 
ways from the character of the mainland. On 
the borders of the bog-pools, eiders and great 
black-backed gulls were generally resting, their 
striking black and white plumage contrasting 
well with the vegetation. One could easily 
spend a whole summer on this one island, and 
not discover all its secrets. 



63 



CHAPTER III 

AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

" Where a few villagers on bended knees 
Find solace which a busy world disdains." 

Wordsworth. 

TN the year 1605 a small party of French- 
men with their wives and children came 
from the western part of France, from Rochelle, 
Santonge and Poiteau, to establish homes for 
themselves in the new world. They settled 
in what is now known as Nova Scotia, but 
which came to be known in those days as Aca- 
dia, and the French settlers, who thrived and 
spread to New Brunswick, Cape Breton, Prince 
Edward Island and the Magdalens, as Acadians. 
Because these people are generally pictured 
as a happy, pastoral race, one is apt to suppose 
that the name Acadia is a corruption of Ar- 
cadia, but this is not the case, for it is derived 
from a word-ending of the Micmac Indian lan- 
guage, meaning " the place of " or " region of," 
and was used as a suffix by these Indians in 

64 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

numerous names of places. The name has also 
been derived from the Indian Aquoddie, mean- 
ing the fish called a pollock. 

The deportation of the Acadians from Nova 
Scotia in 1755 is well known, and is familiar 
to all from Longfellow's poem of Evangeline. 
About a hundred years later, namely in 1857, 
Ferman Boudrot, an Acadian from the Magda- 
len Islands, sought to establish a home at Es- 
quimaux Point on the southern Labrador coast, 
and his example was so contagious that in 1861, 
when Hind visited the place, there were already 
forty Acadian families settled there. Now there 
is a little village of some one hundred and 
twenty houses, a substantial church with a 
steeple and a priests' house. 

That La Pointe aux Esquima uxde La Cote 
du Nord is peopled by those of French descent is 
obvious, for, as Thomas Hood used to say, even 
the little children speak French such as it 
is a patois which always suggested to me that 
the language of Paris had been chewed and 
partially swallowed. However, if my knowledge 
of the French language had been greater, I 
should doubtless have recognized traces of the 
ancient dialects of the parts of France from 

65 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

which the Acadians came, and the French lan- 
guage of the sixteenth century. The little 
children shrugged their shoulders delightfully, 
and said s' paw as cleverly as their elders. Now 
s'paw is merely a contraction of je ne sais pas, 
and corresponds to " I dunno," or to the more 
forcible " search me " used by our friend the 
Yankee painter. Only the doctor and the store- 
keeper as far as I could discover spoke English 
in this place. 

The continued use of the French tongue by a 
people living under the English flag, extending 
through so many generations, is interesting 
and is found not only in out of the way places 
like this little village, but also in a city of the 
size of Quebec, where one sees the words " mai- 
son a loue " placed above " house to let." The 
French and English appear as difficult to mix as 
oil and water. That a certain amount of as- 
similation, however, has taken place is shown in 
the use of the word potdtes instead of pomme 
de terre, and in the incorporation of various 
terms used in connection with navigation. For 
example, " heave tranquilement " and " heave 
le slack away," and " go ahead un pen " were 
orders which arrested my attention on the 

66 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

French steamer that plied along the coast. 
The sign " Passagers are not admit on Foot- 
bridge " showed a recognition of the existence 
of English-speaking people, and a desire to 
reconcile the two languages. 

As the people of Esquimaux Point are all 
fisher-folk, their houses are strung along the 
shore so as to be in close touch with the pas- 
tures of the sea from which the harvest is 
gathered. Each family lived in a picturesque 
little house, and, as they all were very similar 
in appearance, one description will do for all. 
They were of wood neatly painted in white or 
gray with dark coloured roofs, their greatest 
charm, aside from the little dormer windows, 
being the graceful up-curve at the eaves, a 
universal characteristic. The windows all in one 
piece appeared to be permanently sealed, but 
as June advanced the winter fastenings of 
some were withdrawn, and they were opened 
to the air. Plaster was not used in the con- 
struction of these houses indeed only two 
plastered houses did we find along this Labra- 
dor coast but the generous wood-piles and 
the stoves made to burn half a dozen long logs 
at once gave an idea of the warmth to be 

67 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

found in these thin-walled houses even in 
mid -winter. 

The firmly closed windows of these houses 
reminded me of a former experience on the 
eastern Labrador coast. My companion and I 
occupied an 8 by 10 room, and, being peculiar, 
felt it essential to have the window open. This 
was not easily accomplished for the window, 
either through lack of practice or because it 
was not intended to be opened, was almost as 
immovable as the rocks on which the house was 
built. However, we at last managed to raise it 
far enough to insert our arms in the crack, and 
then, with a heave all together, we succeeded 
in wedging it up about eighteen inches, 
enough to let the fresh air blow in and the fog. 
When we left, my friend remarked that they 
would have some difficulty in closing that 
window, and as we stopped at the same house 
on our return from the north, I was amused 
to see that his prophecy was correct, for there 
were marks of blows on the window-frame 
and an axe was in the corner. The axe stood 
us in good stead in opening the window again. 
Dr. Grenfell's hardest work is to teach the Lab- 
radorians the value of fresh air inside their 

68 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

houses. It is said that Newfoundland owes 
the purity of its air to the fact that the in- 
habitants keep their doors and windows tightly 
closed, and it seems probable that Labrador 
owes its wonderful atmosphere to the same 
cause. 

The church with its steeple and the priests' 
house were of ample proportions, well painted 
and prosperous looking, and timber was being 
hauled for a new convent to replace the one 
recently burned. In the convent the youth of 
the region is instructed by the good sisters. Sev- 
eral large crosses were placed at various points in 
the village and a crucifix was in the little burial 
ground. From the eastern extremity of the 
town to the church, a distance of over a mile, 
a long, narrow, well fenced lane stretched 
parallel with the beach, and in this lane a few 
cattle always wandered. One of these was 
familiarly known to my friend and myself 
as " Paul Potter's bull " from his resemblance 
to that celebrated animal, but his familiarity 
with the human race at close quarters had 
rendered his disposition so amiable that we 
soon lost our instinctive fear of him. The 
object of the high fences on either side of the 

69 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

narrow lane, fences sometimes consisting of 
seven or eight bars, was to keep the cattle 
from the little garden plots of which each 
house boasted. 

The first of June appeared to be the begin- 
ning of the spring season with the agricultural- 
ists of Esquimaux Point, for at this date the 
tilling of the gardens began. With the aid of 
broad bladed mattocks, deep furrows were made 
in the dark peaty and sandy soil, the women 
working side by side with the men, if haply 
these latter were not engaged with their boats, 
and the familiar pictures of French peasantry 
were at once suggested. The soil is enriched 
with dark, strong-smelling seaweed brought by 
boats from the islands, and the seeds planted ; 
turnips and cabbages, salads, radishes and pota- 
toes were the chief crops. The rhubarb was just 
beginning at this date to peep above the 
ground. 

Near the houses large black pots were often 
hung for the purpose of washing clothes, and 
a few open air ovens were to be seen, although 
the modern stoves had almost entirely crowded 
out these picturesque relics of the past. 

The fourth of June seemed to be an es- 
70 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

pecially busy day in this community ; agricul- 
tural operations in the little house plots were 
in full progress, and the farmers were generally 
of the female gender, although boys as well as 
girls assisted their mothers, who, in short, 
woollen skirts, with bright handkerchiefs about 
their necks or on their heads, were labouring 
with mattocks to complete the work. The 
men were busy painting their houses or boats, 
which, drawn up on the beach out of the reach 
of the storms, had weathered the long winter 
under thatches of balsam boughs. New 
rigging was being installed, new spars were 
trimmed, nets and sails were spread out to 
mend, and the whole place showed an air of 
great bustle and activity. From time to time 
the men would leave their own work to gather 
in numbers to assist a neighbour to launch his 
boat. 

One very enterprising man had already been 
out to fish, and had brought back the first 
cod of the season, his small boat half filled 
with them. A group of men surrounded the 
boat on the beach to talk over the exciting 
event after the long winter. It was all good 
fun. Our friend the Yankee, and Yankees 

71 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

are not slow in talking, said he never saw 
people with so much to say to each other. If 
they meet after two hours' absence, he said, they 
jabber away as if they had not seen each other 
for months. For example, he had watched six 
men shingling the roof of the doctor's house, 
and they were talking so hard that only semi- 
occasionally was a nail driven. A couple of 
Yankees, he was sure, could have done the 
work in half the time but this perhaps was 
merely spread-eagleism. 

At all events, the people seemed to be enjoy- 
ing themselves and to be looking forward with 
pleasure to the short three or four months' 
fishing season after the long winter. The 
winter is the season of wood-cutting, of visiting 
and of travelling along the icy pathway of the 
coast on dog-sleds, while the summer is devoted 
to fishing, and about 150 sails hail from Esqui- 
maux Point. The summer is their season of 
work, the winter they call play. 

The boats, like the houses, are all of the same 
type. Each boat was about thirty feet in 
length, pointed at both ends and schooner- 
rigged with two masts, although the jib and a 
bowsprit were often lacking. Picturesque 

72 




PREPARATIONS Ft>R THE FISHING SEASON, 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

boats they were, especially when the sails were 
dyed a light pink or terra cotta red to preserve 
them from the weather. About the middle of 
June they all depart for the cod fishing banks 
off Natashquan, and they return with their 
cargoes of dried and salted fish about the 
middle of July, to begin the deep-sea fishing 
eight or ten miles off the home port, a season 
that lasts two or three months more. Hand 
lines only are used, which leave their impress 
in deep grooves on the sides of the boats. Net 
traps, so universal on the eastern coast of 
Labrador, are not allowed here. 

The scene in the village and on the beach 
at this time was always interesting and pic- 
turesque. One man in the hurry of his work 
had pressed a small cow into service; she was 
dragging a tiny cart loaded with ropes and nets 
down to his boat on the beach, while he dra- 
matically strode on ahead. 

Religion takes a prominent place in the lives 
of these people. The church bells ring out 
many times a day to summon them to prayer, 
and to prayer they go, not the women and 
children merely as in some communities and 
some faiths, but men too unless they are absent 

73 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

at their duties. These bells, which were 
11 jangled, out of tune and harsh," so inter- 
fered at times with my observation of small 
birds, whose notes I was trying to detect, that 
I was often tempted to say " Silence that 
dreadful bell: it frights the isle from her 
propriety." 

As the village is a village of fishermen, it is 
appropriate that St. Peter should be its patron 
saint, and that a large tin fish perforated with 
the name of St. Pierre should swim as a weather- 
vane on a mast in the church yard, and that 
St. Peter's cock, very fat and of considerable 
height, should act as a vane on a large cross at 
the end of the town. Still more appropriate 
is the painting over the altar in the church of 
the miraculous draught of fishes, where the 
boats are such as might be used at the present 
day on this stormy coast, and the details of 
pointed sterns and thole-pins have a familiar 
look. The painting, a copy of one by Tissot, 
is the work of a self-taught native, and is 
remarkably well done in soft and harmonious 
colours. Doubtless many a sturdy worshipper, 
while his lips moved in prayer as he counted his 
beads, has envied the success of this draught, 

74 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

and has instinctively calculated its weight and 
value, for one can easily count the fishes, - 
they are very accurately done and are not 
painted in the impressionist style. I was very 
glad that it rained hard one Sunday morning, 
so that I should not be tempted afield, and I 
went to church for the principal service. As 
the bells jangled from the steeple, mine host 
led me up the front steps which were crowded 
with men, who politely touched their hats 
and made way for us as we entered the church. 
Up the main aisle I meekly followed my guide, 
feeling the penetrating gaze of all the congre- 
gation fixed upon me. With a flourish I was 
given the front pew and left to my meditations. 
The vacant places in the pews must have been 
soon filled, I imagined, as I did not at first dare 
to look back of me, for I could hear the stamp- 
ing of heavy boots as the crowd of men filed 
into the church at the last moment. When I did 
summon up courage to look around, I was 
impressed with the black clothes of the wor- 
shippers, the brilliant sweaters, dresses and 
handkerchiefs of the workaday life had van- 
ished, to be replaced in the women by black 
caps and black dresses, and in the men by coats, 

75 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

which, although often weather-beaten to a 
lighter hue, were evidently intended to be 
black. In the gallery near at hand was a row 
of a dozen little girls, among them my friends 
Lalouise and Yvonne, each with her black 
eyes uninterruptedly fixed on the strangers 
in the front pew. As I cast surreptitious 
glances about the church from time to time, I 
could not help noticing the similarity in type 
between these sturdy Acadians and the peas- 
antry of France with whose forms and faces 
modern French art has made us so familiar. 

The service seemed to be very sincere and 
impressive, and the ten little boys, the acolytes, 
whose brown faces and hands, and whose 
shocks of brown hair contrasted well with their 
white vestments, each did his part well. The 
sermon was on La signe de la croix, which the 
good father showed was everywhere, for even 
the birds in the air as they fly, and the fishes in 
the sea as they swim, make the sign of the 
cross. I believe I shall always remember these 
words which rang out through the church at 
the end of almost every sentence. I could not 
help thinking as I watched the two priests 
with their strong faces, their black robes and 

76 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

their brilliant vestments, of les robes noirs, 
who accompanied the explorers of the seven- 
teenth century in these parts, and of the ad- 
miration and astonishment they caused among 
the savages, for whose conversion from pagan- 
ism they laboured so hard. Then the power 
behind them was a mighty power in the king- 
dom of France. Now they are outcasts, re- 
pudiated in their own home, the French Re- 
public, and are seeking liberty to practise their 
religion here in the new world. 

Of the present bishop of this region, Mon- 
seigneur Gustave Blanche, it is said in a pam- 
phlet describing his inauguration to office in 1905 
that " the violent persecution of 1903 found 
him at his post. Thrown on the street, like all 
the clergy that an impious government could 
no longer endure, he took, with a hundred of his 
brethren, the road to Canada in the month of 
August, 1903." J These were the Eudiste fathers, 
a branch founded by Jean Eudes. Up to 1867 
all the territory of Labrador was part of the 

1 Translation from "Les Fetes du sacre de Mgr. Gus- 
tave Blanche, eveque titulaire de Sicca, Vicarre, aposto- 
lique du Golf St.-Laurent. Celebres a Chicotrtimi les 28 
et 29 Octobre, 1905." Quebec, 1906. 

77 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

diocese of Quebec, but after Rimouski was 
erected into an Episcopal seat, all that im- 
mense country of the north-east was detached 
from Quebec and included in the new diocese, 
which was called " La Prefecture apostolique 
du Gulf St. -Laurent." This includes the north- 
ern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence from 
Portneuf to Blanc-Sablon, and extends to the 
north and east as far as Hudson and Ungava 
Bay; it also includes the island of Anticosti. 
Previous to 1903 it was difficult to find priests 
for these isolated regions, but the difficulties 
were, as the pamphlet says, removed by the 
" providential banishment " of the Eudiste 
fathers from France in that year and their 
assumption of the work in this diocese. 

The fathers certainly have most devoted 
followers in this little village of Esquimaux 
Point, and their piety was beautifully shown 
at the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christ i, 
which occurred on the last Sunday of our stay 
at the place. The village was gaily decorated. 
Long strings of bright flags and pennants 
stretched from the church, and a long lane down 
one side of the village brook, across a bridge up 
the other side, and so on across another bridge 

78 




THE PROCESSION AT THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI AT ESQUIMAUX POINT. 




RAISING THE HOST AT THE " REPOSITORY." 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

to the church, had been lined with balsam fir 
and spruce and birch saplings stuck in the sandy 
soil and tied to fence posts. The day before, 
on looking from the door of our house, I had 
been startled by seeing islands of verdure ad- 
vancing like Birnam wood across the sound. 
The islands were boats so filled with trees that 
the rowers were invisible. Flags and banners 
of all shapes and colours waved gaily in the 
wind along this lane and added to the joy and 
beauty of the scene. 

After an impressive vesper service in the 
church, the whole congregation, which was in- 
deed the entire community, sallied forth on the 
prepared way. First came an acolyte, a sturdy, 
handsome youth, bearing aloft in his strong 
hands the cross, and attended by two smaller 
boys bearing candles. All the acolytes were re- 
splendent in scarlet cassocks and white lace 
cottas. Then followed all the little children of 
the village marshalled into some sort of order 
by two anxious nuns, the boys in one line, the 
girls in another. The image of the virgin, borne 
on the shoulders of two women and attended 
by little girls in the bridal dresses of their first 
communion, came next. Behind followed the 

79 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

women, young and old, many with babes in 
arms. The central figure of the procession 
was the priest dressed in gorgeous vestments 
and bearing the host. He strode along under a 
canopy supported by four sturdy fishermen, pre- 
ceded by a banner, a company of men singers, 
and four large candle-lanterns, raised aloft on 
poles by four white-bearded men. Seven boys 
in scarlet and white took their appointed 
positions in the group. Behind the priest fol- 
lowed the long throng of men, all bare-headed, 
with whom I reverently joined. 

Along the narrow, sandy lane we slowly 
walked. Great solemnity, piety and adoration 
of the sacred services were shown on every 
face. There was no levity, no idle conversation ; 
there were no lookers-on, all were participants. 
The men sang, the priest intoned, the bells in 
the steeple rang forth; a fox sparrow's flute- 
like tones issued from the brook-side, clear and 
sweet, and the holy vespers of the hermit thrush 
came faintly from the distant forest. At last 
we reached a turning in the lane where the 
priest entered a repository, gayer still with 
flags and bright pictures, images and paper 
flowers, and with carpets placed about. Here, 

80 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 

after a short service, the host was raised and 
the prostrate people blessed. Again the journey 
was continued over a little bridge to another 
repository, where the same service was re- 
peated. Again the church bells jangled forth, 
and the procession slowly wound its way to the 
bridge by the church, and so on into the sacred 
edifice. Here the services were completed 
with much burning of incense and music. 

To even think of photographing such a holy 
procession seemed sacrilegious, but on inquiring 
beforehand, I had learned that the good father 
would consider it a privilege if some photographs 
could be obtained of such an event, as cameras 
were unknown in the village. So from time to 
time my friend and I slipped from the ranks of 
worshippers and endeavoured to fasten on the 
photographic films some records, however im- 
perfect, which might remotely suggest the 
simple piety and beauty of the scene. 

It was with regret that I left this little Aca- 
dian village with its simple, peaceful life. One 
of the first settlers who had brought his family 
from the Magdalen Islands is reported to have 
said in reply to a question by Abb 6 Ferland 
as to his reasons for leaving long-settled regions 

81 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

for the wilderness: " The plagues of Egypt 
had fallen upon us. The first three came with 
bad harvests, the seigneurs, and the traders; 
the remaining four arrived with the gentlemen 
of the law. The moment the lawyers set their 
feet upon our island there was no longer any 
hope left of maintaining ourselves there." For- 
tunately his animadversions were not extended 
to any other profession, so I was always treated 
with the politeness that is characteristic of the 
race. May the simple life long continue on these 
shores! 



82 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COURTSHIPS OF SOME LABRADOR BIRDS 

" Mille modi veneris." 

Ovid. 

A MONO the primitive races of mankind 
* the male as a rule adorns himself more 
than the female. He it is that rejoices more 
in tattoo markings and paints, in the beauty 
of the dressing of his hair and in adornments by 
bright feathers. The female is modest by com- 
parison and quiet in her savage apparel. Among 
the lower animals this adornment in the male is, 
with a few exceptions, the rule. The stag with 
his great antlers is a striking object beside the 
demure doe. Among the birds the contrast be- 
tween the sexes is still more emphasized, and 
the brilliantly coloured cock often appears to 
belong to a different race from the quietly 
dressed hen. The most striking contrasts are 
to be seen among the famous birds of paradise 

83 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

where the females are as dull coloured and in- 
conspicuous as sparrows. 

That all this is very different from the present 
day fashion among civilized mankind is of 
course a trite observation, but one wonders 
whether the old instinct is not still present, for 
men. when away from the restraints of con- 
ventionality, love to adorn themselves with 
striking raiment, as witness the cow-boy and the 
tourist-sportsman, while it is an open question 
whether men are not naturally more attracted 
by the women quietly but carefully and taste- 
fully dressed, than by the woman whose gar- 
ments suggest the male bird of paradise. Most 
women think otherwise, if we are to judge from 
outward appearances, but I am inclined to think 
they do not understand men, and are ignorant 
of this deep, inherited taste. 

One of the most marked examples of the 
adornment of the male and of the quiet dress 
of the female among birds is the eider, a common 
and characteristic duck of this Labrador coast. 
The male is indeed a striking bird; he is 
a splendid duck of large proportions with a 
creamy white upper breast and back. His 

wings, tail, lower breast, belly and top of his 

84 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

head to just below the eyes are jet black, while 
the sides of his face and the back of his head are 
washed with a most delicate and lovely shade 
of green. Seen from the side, when he swims 
on the water, the black crown, wings and tail 
contrast beautifully with the general whiteness 
of the rest of the plumage. From behind, the 
black crown is seen to be carefully parted by a 
white line in the centre, while the black wings 
and tail, separated by a white division, make a 
striking pattern. In flight, the black belly and 
white breast are conspicuous, an arrangement 
the reverse of the usual in bird colouration. 

The female eider, on the other hand, effaces 
herself in a garment of brown, so that she is 
often invisible against the dark water, while 
her mate shines forth conspicuously. One may 
see at a distance a company of eiders all ap- 
parently males, but on nearer approach the 
company is found to contain a number of 
females, which were at first invisible owing to 
their plainer colouring. To their mates these 
lady eiders must appear very charming, and 
indeed to human eyes, the beauty of the plu- 
mage of the females must be granted, for, when 
seen at close range, they show most wonderful 

85 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

pencillings of rich brown and black, and each 
feather is a work of art. The dress is modesty 
itself, but in richness of colouring and good 
taste it cannot be excelled. In fact, as a con- 
stant companion, I should prefer the richly 
but modestly dressed duck to the gaudy drake, 
but this, of course, is my inherited masculine 
taste, a taste, however, that appears to be 
shared by the drake. 

That the drake is fond of the duck is evident 
from the love-makings that go on in these cold 
waters, and indeed the study of the courtships 
of the eider was one of my greatest interests in 
this Labrador spring. Everywhere we went 
among the rocky islands that line the coast, 
pairs and little bands of eiders abounded. We 
found twenty nests on one island of a few 
acres, and, on our walk around Esquimaux 
Island, we must have seen at least 500 of these 
beautiful birds. They were usually in pairs, 
and, when flying, the female preceded, closely 
followed by the male. This was certainly the 
rule when the birds were flying about un- 
aware of the presence of man, but; when 
disturbed or frightened by his presence, I re- 
gret to have to state that the male often 

86 



NEST OF GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL. 




NEST OF EIDER DUCK. 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

flew first in his eagerness to get away from 
danger. Sometimes several pairs, apparently 
mated, would swim about together or rest on 
the rocks close to the water, while at other 
times one or two females would be surrounded 
by six or eight males that were crowding about 
them to win their favours. 

The actual courtship of the eider, or moynak, 
as it is universally known along this French- 
Indian coast of Labrador, may be recognized 
from afar by the love-note of the male, a note 
that Cartwright likened to the cooing of the 
stock-dove. To me it sounded like the syllables 
aah-ou, or ah-ee-ou frequently repeated, and, 
while low and pleasing in tone, its volume is so 
great that it can be heard at a considerable dis- 
tance over the water. On a calm day, when 
there were many eiders about, the sound was al- 
most constant. While the syllables aah-ou ex- 
press very well the usual notes, there is much 
variation in tone from a low and gentle pleading, 
to a loud and confident assertion. In fact the 
tones vary much as do those of the human voice, 
and there is a very human quality in them, so 
much so that when alone on some solitary isle, 
I was not infrequently startled with the idea 

87 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

that there were men near at hand. To all these 
pleadings the female remains silent or occa- 
sionally utters a low and simple ku ku ku. 

But the wooer of the demure one does not 
depend on his voice alone, he displays his 
charms of dress to best advantage, and indulges 
in well worn antics. It always seemed to me 
a pity that the magnificent black lower parts 
should disappear when the drake is swimming 
on the water, and the bird evidently shares my 
sentiments, for during courtship, he frequently 
displays his black shield by rising up in front, so 
that at times, in his eagerness, he almost stands 
upon his tail. To further relieve his feelings, 
he also throws back his head, and occasionally 
flaps his wings. The movements of his head 
and neck are an important part of the court- 
ship, and although there is considerable varia- 
tion in the order and extent of the performance, 
a complete antic is somewhat as follows: the 
head is drawn rigidly down, the bill resting 
against the breast; the head is then raised up 
until the bill points vertically upwards, and 
at this time the bill may or may not be opened 
to emit the love notes; after this the head is 
jerked backwards a short distance still rigidly, 

88 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

and then returned to its normal position. All 
this the drake does swimming near the duck, 
often facing her in his eagerness, while she 
floats about indifferently, or at times shows her 
interest and appreciation by facing him and 
throwing up her head a little in a gentle imita- 
tion of his force fulness. 1 

Another duck whose courtship antics are 
even more interesting than those of the eider is 
the American golden-eye or whistler, the plan- 

1 Abbott H. Thayer's statement in the Introduction to 
Gerald H. Thayer's wonderfully interesting book on 
" Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom " that 
" This discovery that patterns and utmost contrasts of 
colour (not to speak of appendages) on animals make 
wholly for their ' obliteration,' is a fatal blow to the vari- 
ous theories that these patterns exist mainly as nuptial 
dress, warning colours, mimicry devices (t. e., mimicry of 
one species by another), etc., since these are all attempts 
to explain an entirely false conception that such patterns 
make their wearers conspicuous** seems to me hard to 
believe in the case of the male eider. I have watched this 
bird on land, on water and in the air, on rocks, in bogs 
and among bushes both green and brown, among icebergs 
and ice floes, and, if I were a gyrfalcon intent on eider 
flesh, I should not wish for a more conspicuous mark. I 
can not help thinking that the brilliant orange-yellow legs 
of the male golden-eye, the vivid blue lining of the mouth 
of the double-crested cormorant and the wonderful black 
belly-shield of the male eider are instances of the work- 
ings of sexual selection. 

89 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

geur of this coast. While the eider makes its 
nest on the ground often concealed under the 
grass and bushes, and lays from four to seven 
large olive green eggs, which it smothers in its 
own down, the whistler lays six or more pale 
green eggs in a hollow tree. Of the former we 
found many nests, of the latter only one, and 
this was in a large hollow stub about twelve 
feet from the ground on the edge of a high cliff 
overlooking the sea near Esquimaux Point. In 
this well chosen spot, which commanded exten- 
sive views of the surrounding country and 
ocean, a whistler had deposited fifteen eggs and 
covered them thickly with down. 

As the cliff was over a hundred feet high, the 
process of transfer of the future brood from the 
nest to the water would have been well worth 
waiting to see, if only one had had the time. 
Tree-nesting ducks have been observed to entice 
the young from the hole, inducing them to drop 
or flutter down into the grass or the water, 
and it has been said that they sometimes fly 
down carrying the young in the bill, or even 
on the back. Careful observations of these last 
named methods are, however, few or lacking, 
and our regret at not being able to stay 

90 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

and watch the process was therefore the 
greater. 

Although I did not observe the courtship 
of the whistler in Labrador, and its extreme 
shyness is probably the reason that so little 
has been written on the subject, I have ob- 
served it at Ipswich and Barnstable in Massa- 
chusetts, and especially in the Charles River 
Basin at Boston where, owing to the protection 
afforded by the great city, the birds are unusu- 
ally tame and unsuspicious. 

The spring is of course the time when the 
courtship actions are most indulged in, and they 
begin in mild days in February and continue 
until the departure of the birds for the north 
early in April. In the autumn months, how- 
ever, it is not uncommon to see the same per- 
formance given both by the adults and young 
males, although but incompletely carried out 
in the latter case. 

The courtship action varies considerably, 
but a typical and complete one may be de- 
scribed as follows: One or more males swim 
restlessly back and forth and around a female. 
The feathers of the cheeks and crest of the male 
are so erected that the head looks large and 

91 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

round, the neck correspondingly small, and as 
he swims forward the head is thrust out in front 
close to the water, occasionally dabbing at it. 
Suddenly he springs forward elevating his 
breast, and at the same time enters on the most 
typical and essential part of the performance. 
The neck is stretched up, and the bill, pointing 
to the zenith, is opened to emit a harsh, rasping, 
double note, zzee at, vibrating and searching in 
character. The head is then quickly snapped 
back until the occiput touches the rump, whence 
it is brought forward again with a jerk to the 
normal position. As the head is brought to 
its place, the bird often springs forward, kicking 
the water out behind, and displaying like a flash 
of flame the orange coloured legs. This appears 
to be the complete performance, and the female 
although usually passive, sometimes responds 
by protruding her head close to the water in 
front, and then bringing it up so that it also 
points to the zenith. Further than this, I 
have not seen her go. It must be remembered 
that even as late as March there are many young 
males whose plumage resembles that of the 
female, although the males are of larger size, yet 
it is often difficult to distinguish them from the 

92 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

female. That the female does take part to this 
limited extent in the nuptial performance, I 
have, however, convinced myself. Although 
this performance is more striking than that of 
the eider just related, the family resemblance 
can be detected. 

There are many variations of this curious 
action. It may be curtailed, so that the thrust- 
ing of the head up into the air alone re- 
mains, or it may be limited to the upward 
thrust of the head and the jerk to and from 
the rump. When the birds are at such a dis- 
tance that the note can not be heard, it is 
impossible to say when it is emitted, but I 
have observed birds close at hand go through 
the performance silently. I have also seen 
them thrust out the head in front in such a 
way as apparently to scoop up the water and 
then elevate the head, the bill pointing straight 
up but closed as if they were drinking the water. 
Sometimes the head is held on the rump for sev- 
eral seconds before it is snapped into place. 

A male after ardently performing the court- 
ship actions near a female flew off with his 
head low about a hundred yards. The female 
swam rapidly after him with head stretched 

93 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

close to the water, but lifted up vertically from 
time to time in the courting manner, and she 
soon joined her mate. 

The display of the brilliant orange legs and 
feet by the males is particularly interesting. 
These members in the female are pale yellow 
in colour, and it may be supposed that the males 
have attained the more attractive orange as a 
result of sexual selection. They certainly make 
good use of this brilliant colour in the courtship 
display, for the flash of the orange feet con- 
trasting with the snowy flanks of the bird and 
the dark water is extremely effective, and 
noticeable even at a considerable distance. In 
this connection it is interesting to note that the 
legs and feet of both male and female Barrow's 
golden-eye are alike pale yellow. I am not 
familiar with the courtship of this bird, and as 
far as I know it has never been described, 
but I think it is reasonable to infer that the 
display of the legs, as in the American golden- 
eye, is not a part of the performance. As 
the Barrow's golden-eye lacks the peculiar 
localized swelling of the lower wind-pipe found 
in the other species, one might suppose that 
the musical part of the performance was also 

94 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

lacking in their case. A study of the courtship 
of this very similar yet very different bird is 
much to be desired, and might throw consider- 
able light on the relationships or evolution 
of the two species. 

There is no more unusual and bizarre sight 
in the bird world than a dozen or more beautiful 
whistler drakes crowding restlessly around a 
few demure little females, and displaying these 
antics of head, neck, and feet, while ever 
and anon their curious love-song pierces the air. 

At Esquimaux Point on June 2nd, as I was 
standing on the rocks on the shore, I was startled 
by the loud quack or croak characteristic of the 
female black duck, and looking up I saw two 
large black ducks, evidently males, in close 
pursuit of a smaller female. They doubled and 
twisted in a manner wonderful to see, as the 
duck appeared to be straining every nerve to 
elude the drakes. At last one of the drakes 
gave up the pursuit and disappeared over the 
low forest, whereupon the other drake and 
duck sailed away together, as if it had all been 
arranged beforehand, straight to a secluded 
pool out of sight behind the rocks. The whole 
affair was of short duration but very exciting 

95 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

while it lasted, and very decisive; one of the 
drakes had to be rejected. 

Another water bird whose courtship I watched 
on the Labrador coast was that curious indi- 
vidual that compound of dignity and com- 
icality the puffin. On this coast the bird 
is universally known as the " perroquet," but 
Sir Richard Bonnycastle in his "Newfound- 
land in 1842 " justly says it " may be called 
the sea-owl, from its extraordinary head and 
wise look." Near Bald Island they delighted 
to gather on the water in compact parties of 
fifty or sixty individuals, that were constantly 
moving in and out like a crowd at an afternoon 
tea. Every now and then one would sit up on 
the water and spread its wings, and once I 
watched two fighting with flapping wings, and, 
at another time, two struggling together for a 
full minute with interlocked beaks. Occasion- 
ally one puffin would face another, and throw 
its head back with a quick jerk so that the bill 
pointed vertically up, and then lower it again. 
At one time I saw several birds do this, but as 
the wind was strong, the water rough and the 
distance considerable, my observations were 
far from complete and satisfactory. Edmund 

96 




ENTRANCE TO PUFFIN BURROW, BALD ISLAND. 




WATER WORN LIMESTONE ROCKS AT BALD ISLAND. NESTING SHELVES FOR 
RAZOR-BILLED \UKS. 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

Selous, 1 who has watched sea-birds in the 
Shetlands, says of the puffin: " One of the birds, 
standing so as directly to face the other, will 
often raise and then again lower, the head, 
some eight or nine times in succession, in a half 
solemn manner, at the same time opening its 
gaudy beak, sometimes to a considerable ex- 
tent, yet all the time without uttering a sound." 
Not only is the outside of the beak gaudy in 
scarlet with white and blue lines, but the inside 
with its brilliant yellow lining is superlatively 
so, and is probably, as Selous suggests, de- 
veloped as a result of sexual selection. The 
inside of the mouth of the double crested cor- 
morant is a vivid blue that of the European 
shag described by Selous is curiously enough a 
" bright gamboge yellow " while on opening 
the mouth of a black guillemot I found it to be 
scarlet, All these birds open wide the beak in 
courtship, according to Selous. 

Among many of our smaller birds it fre- 
quently happens in the height of the spring 
season and in the ecstasy of their passion that 
they rise into the air with rapidly fluttering 

^he Bird Watcher in the Shetlands. London, 1905, 
p. 246. 

97 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

wings as they pour forth their love-song. This 
happens regularly in the case of such birds as 
the pipet, the horned-lark and the long-billed 
marsh wren, and less regularly in the song 
sparrow, oven bird, and Maryland yellow- 
throat. 

In these cases the slight music made by the 
rapid and forcible fluttering of the wings is 
wholly subordinate to the song. In the case 
of the ruffed grouse on the other hand, the 
music of the wings is everything, there is no 
vocal music and no locomotion, for the bird 
stands on a log and flutters its wings so rapidly 
that a loud whirring or " drumming " sound is 
made, by which the bird expresses, doubtless, 
the same emotions as are expressed by the fox 
sparrow with its wonderful song. 

Mr. William Brewster, in his description of 
a drumming grouse, says : " Suddenly he paused 
and sitting down on his rump and tarsi, cross- 
wise on the log, ... he stretched out his wings 
stiffly at nearly right angles with the body. . , . 
Now the wings were drawn slightly back, a 
quick stroke given forward, at the air, and a 
pulsating throb, entirely different from any 
sound I have ever heard, struck my ear, pro- 

98 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

ducing at such short range an almost painful 
sensation: the wings were immediately re- 
covered, and another stroke, a trifle quicker 
than the first, was succeeded by another still 
quicker, until the wings vibrated too fast to be 
followed by the eye, producing the well-known 
terminal roll of muffled thunder." 

Although this performance is very different 
from the fluttering flight of the singing bird, yet 
there are two other Labrador birds that illus- 
trate very well, it seems to me, the stages in its 
evolution. One of these is the willow ptarmi- 
gan, which, we were told came to the southern 
coast in great numbers every five or six winters. 
In this season the bird is snow-white with the 
exception of a black tail, but in summer it is 
brown and matches so well its surroundings that 
it is almost impossible to see it on the ground. 
In the love season it does not drum like its 
cousin the ruffed grouse, neither does it sing, in 
fact it tries to do both, but, as is often the case 
under these circumstances, it falls between two 
stools and does neither well. Mr. L. M. Turner 
thus describes the nuptial performance of the 
willow grouse, as he observed it in Labrador : 
" In the spring these birds repair, as the snow 

99 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

melts, to the lower grounds and prepare for the 
nuptial season. About the loth of April they 
may be heard croaking or barking on all sides. 
A male selects a favourable tract of territory 
for the location of the nest, and endeavours to 
induce a female to resort to that place. He 
usually selects the highest portion of the tract, 
whence he launches into the air uttering a bark- 
ing sound of nearly a dozen separate notes, 
thence sails or flutters in a circle to alight at the 
same place whence he started, or to alight on 
another high place, from which he repeats 
the act while flying to his former place. Imme- 
diately on alighting, he utters a sound similar 
to the Indian word chu-xwan (what is it?) and 
repeats it several times, and in the course of 
a few minutes again launches in the air." 

The second stage in the evolution of the 
drumming performance is illustrated by the 
Canada grouse or spruce partridge, who has 
developed the wing music to such an extent 
that he has given up the vocal music. The 
wing music, however, appears to be still some- 
what dependent on flight and has not advanced 
to the stage seen in the ruffed grouse, where the 
wing music has become a performance in itself 

100 



COURTSHIPS OF LABRADOR BIRDS 

and not incidental to flight. Although we saw 
a number of spruce partridges in various places 
on the coast, and although we watched and 
listened eagerly for their nuptial performance, 
we were unsuccessful. Bendire quotes the 
following description of the act: " After strut- 
ting back and forth for a few minutes, the male 
flew straight up, as high as the surrounding 
trees, about 14 feet; here he remained station- 
ary an instant, and while on suspended wing 
did the drumming with the wings, resembling 
distant thunder, meanwhile dropping down 
slowly to the spot from where he started, to 
repeat the same thing over and over again." 
He also quotes another description of the drum- 
ming as follows: ' The Canada Grouse per- 
forms its * drumming ' upon the trunk of a 
standing tree of rather small size, preferably one 
that is inclined from the perpendicular, and in 
the following manner: Commencing near the 
base of the tree selected, the bird flutters up- 
ward with somewhat slow progress, but rapidly 
beating wings, which produce the drumming 
sound. Having thus ascended 15 or 20 feet 
it glides quietly on wing to the ground and 
repeats the manoeuvre." 
101 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Whether in the future ages the ptarmigan 
will reach the stage of the spruce partridge, and 
the latter that of the ruffed grouse, or whether 
they will each branch out on original lines of 
their own, time alone will determine, but in the 
present age they represent very well different 
stages in the evolution of the wonderful per- 
formance of the ruffed grouse. 



102 



CHAPTER V 

THE CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE FROM 
ESQUIMAUX POINT TO NATASHQUAN 

" Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen 
Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine." 

Whittier. 



Labrador Coast from the base of the 
Peninsula to Cape Charles at the en- 
trance of the Straits of Belle Isle is nearly 
600 miles in length, and from Cape Charles to 
Cape Chidley at the northern extremity of the 
eastern coast the distance is about 700 miles. 
With a few insignificant gaps this entire coast 
line of over one thousand miles is so beset with 
islands that it is possible to cruise in a small 
boat in protected water-ways nearly the whole 
distance. One must bide one's time, however, 
in the gaps, for in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as 
well as on the Atlantic Coast the seas are often 
of the stormiest. 

At Esquimaux Point, with the kind assist- 

103 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

ance of the government physician, Dr. Trem- 
blay, we were put in touch with two good men, 
Mathias and Martial, owners of a fishing-boat, 
with whom we proposed to cruise along the coast 
to the eastward, stopping wherever we wished 
and exploring all places of interest. The boat 
was like all the fishing-boats of that shore, 
staunch and seaworthy, thirty feet long and 
pointed at the ends like a canoe or ancient 
caravel. I suppose its model dated back to 
European ones, although an evolution from the 
Indian canoe at once struck my fancy. The 
birch canoe of the Indians in this region has 
been replaced by them with one of the same 
model but covered with painted canvas. The 
ease with which canvas can be obtained as com- 
pared with birch bark of the proper size, its 
lightness and strength and resistance to injury, 
has endeared the canvas canoes to the Indian, 
as well as to the white. The next step in the 
evolution is the wooden canoe, a stauncher and 
stronger boat and useful on the sea, one that 
is propelled both by oars and paddles. From 
that to the strong canoe-shaped rowing boats 
used as tenders by the fishermen here seems 
also a simple step, while the large sailing boat 

104 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

with its pointed ends appears to be but an am- 
plification of the tender. 

Our boat or barge, as it was technically called, 
was decked over and provided with a small 
cock-pit astern, and an equally small cabin or 
cuddy in the bow. It was schooner-rigged 
with two masts, and, although the owners took 
great pride in the white sails, and said the boat 
could therefore sail the faster, I myself re- 
gretted that the sails were not stained a pic- 
turesque red, or pink, or brown, as were those 
of many other barges in this region. Some of 
these stains were wonderful bits of colour, 
shading like a water-colour wash from dark 
mahogany in one part of the sail, to a light 
pinkish hue in another part. Others were more 
uniform, but the effect was always pleasing 
and suggestive of the colouring of the sails in 
far less rugged and more smiling waters. 

In the cuddy of our boat was a tiny iron 
stove, which, however, took up so much of the 
little room that there was but space for one 
man to lie out at length on that side, and here 
my friend made his bed. On the other transom 
Mathias and Martial by overlapping end to end 
were able to sleep, and sleep they did there 
105 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

every night on the narrow shelf as quietly as 
babies. A small triangle of floor was left be- 
tween on which a child of six might have been 
able to lie at length, and which Martial explained 
by expressive pantomime made an excellent 
bed if one sat up and leaned against the mast. 

Guns, charts, food, cameras, clothing and 
materials for preparing specimens took up all 
available space not devoted to sleeping and 
cooking, but by a little care in managing, we 
were able to live very comfortably. It cer- 
tainly simplifies life to have, as Martial ex- 
pressed it, la salle a manger, la salle a fumer, la 
chambre a coucher, le salon et la cuisine all to- 
gether. One could put one's hand on every 
thing from a central point. According to Dr. 
Grenfell, there is a Labrador beatitude which 
says: " Most blessed is the man who can get 
along with least things." 

Although there was plenty of air in these 
somewhat confined quarters, and it was always 
cold at night, I preferred all out of doors for 
my chambre a coucher, and, provided with a 
sleeping-bag and a bed of balsam boughs care- 
fully thatched on the deck, I enjoyed this 
chambre to my heart's content during the cruise. 

106 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

A sleeping-bag is a delightful thing in a cold 
climate; one dresses instead of undressing for 
bed, and puts on all the clothes he has, if his 
blanket is thin, while going to bed is very much 
like crawling into a hole and pulling the hole 
in afterwards, a thing most of us would like 
to do metaphorically from time to time. 

To sleep out under the stars in cool, pure air, 
free from mosquitoes or flies of any sort, to 
breathe in the fragrance of the balsam and the 
sea, to be gently rocked by the subdued ocean 
waves in protected harbours, to be lulled to 
sleep by the lapping of the water against the 
boat's sides, by the calls of the spotted sandpiper 
and the evening hymn of the robin, to awake to 
the song of the fox sparrow and the white- 
throat on the shores, and the love-cooing of the 
eider on the water, this was indeed good 
and productive of heart's content. 

Such a boat as this should needs have a 
name, but the need apparently had not occurred 
to the owners. I asked, therefore, the name of 
one of the daughters of Mathias, who, in prep- 
aration for the cruise, was diligently scrubbing 
the cabin at the moorings off Esquimaux Point, 
and at once with due solemnity christened the 
107 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

boat " La Belle Marguerite," choosing the name 
the more readily as one of my own also bore it. 

From Esquimaux Point we set sail in "La 
Belle Marguerite " with a good breeze on May 
25th, skirting the shore on the left and the 
islands on the right, successively passing Es- 
quimaux Island, Sea Cow Island, Charles 
Island and Hunting Island, all of the Mingan 
group. At times it seemed more like sailing in 
inland lakes than in the sea. The second of 
these islands just mentioned takes its name, 
not from the sea-cow or manatee, but from 
the walrus which formerly extended its range 
from the arctic regions along this Labrador 
coast, but is now never seen there except in 
the most northern portions of Labrador. 

From Esquimaux Point a beach extends 
eastward for twelve miles or more, backed by a 
sand and clay cliff, brown and white and gray, 
which increases in height towards the east- 
wards, where it reaches an elevation of a hun- 
dred and twenty-five feet. Here, as we after- 
wards discovered, bank swallows had made 
their nesting holes, and about sixty of these 
little birds, uttering their rasping chirps, were 
flying about. How they manage to dig their 

108 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

deep holes in the hard bank with their feeble 
claws and bill is always a mystery. It only 
shows what persistence will do, and the same 
lesson was taught by the great cross gullies, or 
canyons, made in these cliffs by little rivulets, 
that had been slowly cutting down to sea level, 
or perhaps had always remained at sea level 
as the cliffs were gradually elevated. 

On the way we stopped to watch a single 
northern phalarope, sitting like a miniature 
swan in the water and pirouetting about in the 
stormy waves. The bird proved to be a female. 
It is interesting to remember that among the 
phalaropes the females are larger and more 
brightly coloured than the males, that they do 
the courting, and that they leave to the down- 
trodden husband the duties of incubation and 
care of the young. They are suffragettes with 
a vengeance. 

At Faux Pas Island, a gravelly and grassy 
bank of a few acres in extent, we landed and 
feasted our eyes on our first saddle-back's or 
great black-backed gull's nest. A conspicuous 
object it was, over four feet across, made of 
roots, grasses and seaweed, and built over a 
derelict tree trunk. Inside it measured ten 
109 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

inches in diameter, was lined with fine grasses 
and contained three great eggs, olive-green in 
colour, beautifully decorated with large brown 
spots. After this we found many of these nests, 
nearly every island contained several of 
them. Some of the nests consisted only of 
depressions in the turf surrounded by rings of 
particularly green grass, nests that had prob- 
ably been used for successive years. We were 
rarely out of sight or hearing of these splendid 
birds all the time we were in Labrador, even 
when we were trudging over the inland bogs. 
Splendid great birds they were indeed with their 
snow-white heads, breasts and tails, and their 
black backs and wings, and they recalled 
slightly by their size, colouring and majestic 
flight the bald eagle. Their calls were interest- 
ing and very various. Some were suggestive 
of human anger or grief or derision. At times 
their voices appeared to threaten, at times to 
deride, and again they appeared to be con- 
versing in low tones to each other as they flew 
overhead or sailed about gracefully in the 
strong winds. Hoarse ha, ha, ha, high pitched 
ki, ki, ki, harsh and croaking caw, caw, caw, 
were some of their calls I noted, and sometimes 

no 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

they cried car-ca-son most distinctly. That 
evening we anchored behind Hunting Island 
in the sheltered harbour of Betchewun, and 
paid our respects to the solitary inhabitant. 
Again we were off, and this time, taking ad- 
vantage of the calm water in the early morning, 
we laid our course for Seal Rock, which was a 
barren lime-stone rock, one of the last of the 
Mingan group. Not altogether barren this 
rock proved to be, however, for, although only 
about an acre in extent, it could be seen even 
from a distance to be covered with black ob- 
jects, which stretched up their necks in alarm 
at our approach. Suddenly about 400 birds, 
double-crested cormorants or shags as they 
are also called, sprang into the air and flew 
about over our heads, for the most part silent 
but occasionally uttering hoarse croaks. Weird 
birds they are, with long, snake-like necks and 
great feet like bat's wings, with webs connect- 
ing all their toes. Their black plumage, show- 
ing a purple metallic sheen, is relieved by orange- 
coloured patches of bare skin at the throat, 
at the base of the bill and in front of the eye. 
Their eyelids are black with a beading of blue 
spots, while the eyes themselves are emerald- 
111 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

green. The inside of the mouth is one of their 
greatest charms, and, according to Selous, is 
displayed during courtship; it is coloured a 
vivid, theatrical blue, which contrasts in a 
striking manner with the bare, orange throat. 
How irresistible a cormorant beau must be 
when he casts his jewelled eyes at his lady love, 
and opens on her the blue grotto of his mouth! 
To complete his charms, he is provided with 
two little tufts of feathers, one either side of his 
head, from which he gets his specific name. 

From afar we scented their domiciles, for 
an all pervading " ancient and a fish-like " smell 
rose upon the air. We counted 204 nests, 
basket-like structures six inches to a foot high 
and a foot and a half across, made of sticks and 
seaweed cunningly woven together and lined 
with grasses. Some were decorated, I use 
the word advisedly, with large gulls' feath- 
ers, and many with branches of evergreen, 
balsam, fir, spruce, juniper and laurel. Nearly 
all contained eggs, chalky white and dirty, 
from one to five in number. One needed a 
strong stomach and a sure foot to walk about 
these rocks slippery with " la farine des cormo- 
rants," which painted rocks and nests alike a 

112 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

dirty white colour. At last we finished our 
work of counting, photographing, and note- 
taking, and, as we departed, we were glad to 
see the great black aeroplanes sail gracefully 
down to their unsavoury abodes. 

"As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking his rocky haunt, 
With his prey laden," 

Milton in "Paradise Lost" offers a tribute to 
the uncanny nature of this bird, when he says 
of Satan: 

" Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life, 
The middle tree and highest there that grew, 
Sat like a cormorant." 

After this we hoped to explore Bald Island, 
the home of the puffins, but the wind proving 
unfavourable we deferred this visit for a future 
time, and again turned our prow eastward 
and soon passed a solitary house on the rocky 
shore, which was used in the lobster fishery. 
Here, beginning the first week in June, lobsters 
are caught and canned. Farther to the east- 
ward near the mouth of the Corneille River is 
another house used by salmon-fishers. At last 
113 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

we came to anchor in a lovely land-locked 
harbour among Les Isles des Corneilles, and 
here we spent a most interesting twenty-four 
hours, exploring the low, rounded granitic 
islands and the main land with its salt marshes, 
its bogs, its impenetrable forests and its rush- 
ing turbid river. 

Eiders were everywhere and their love notes 
were constantly in our ears. They were to be 
seen not only on the water, but also on the 
rocks and among the stunted spruce bushes 
of the islands where we frequently stumbled 
on their nests, the large olive -green eggs con- 
cealed in a mass of soft eider down. 

A flock of twenty-eight geese were feeding 
in a shallow pool between two islands, and, as 
I watched them from a sheltered sunny nook 
beside a great snowbank, I listened to the songs 
of the melodious sparrow family as represented 
by the white-crowned, white-throated, tree and 
fox sparrows, all good singers. To the majority 
of people the word sparrow calls up only the 
English sparrow of our streets with its nerve- 
racking chirps ! Little do they know how musi- 
cal are most of this tribe and what a great tribe 
it is. 

114 




MATHIAS AND MARTIAL AND THE BEAVER. 




THE BEAVER" SKIN. 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

It was here in the little harbour of the Crow 
that Mathias, he of the brass bracelet to keep 
off rheumatism and salt-water sores, cried out 
" Les Sauvages! " and here I made my first 
visit on these interesting people. 

Again we bore away, and this time for Pi- 
ashte-bai Bay, at whose mouth we visited a soli- 
tary Indian wigwam, and spent part of two 
days with a fur-trader, visiting his house, as- 
cending the river to the falls and gathering 
much interesting information. 

While we were on the shore we met one of the 
inhabitants returning from his traps with a 
large beaver on his back, and, on our return to 
" La Belle," we found that the men had shot 
another as it was swimming across the harbour. 
They are interesting beasts, these beaver, from 
many points of view, historical and otherwise, 
and that night I learned some new facts. With 
great care Mathias prepared the tit-bit, the 
tail, for supper. First he roasted it slightly over 
the embers, so that the black, scaly skin could 
be easily scraped off; then with an axe he cut 
up the white meat into little cubes, and boiled it 
in a sauce-pan. It tasted something like pigs' 
feet, and although good eating, was not as 
115 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

pleasant to my palate as beaver steaks, which 
were delicious and suggested goose. As we 
were eating I suddenly remembered it was 
Friday, and feared our good friends were com- 
mitting a grievous sin. Not so, however, for, 
as Mathias explained, beaver is poisson,as is also 
the moynak or eider and other sea ducks, but 
one may not eat of river ducks on Friday, for 
they are viands. There are more ways than 
one of whipping the devil around the stump. 
Of eggs, however, there was no question, and 
my companion was an ardent collector of egg 
shells. With a drill he carefully bored a hole 
in one side of the egg into which a small blow- 
pipe was inserted; now this blow-pipe was 
connected with a rubber bulb, which, on com- 
pression by the hand, forced out through the 
same hole the contents of the egg. These con- 
tents were not wasted, far from it, but 
were received into the frying-pan, and we had, 
with a clear conscience and as the result of 
scientific activity on our parts, omelets of 
eiders', great-black-backed gulls', puffins' and 
even cormorants' eggs. The last named we let 
Mathias prepare after a Labrador receipt : flour 
in generous proportion was mixed with the eggs, 

116 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

together with salt and butter, the whole form- 
ing a stiff pancake which was browned on one 
side, turned over and browned on the other, 
and then cut into four pie-shaped pieces that 
could stand alone. It tasted good, although 
a trifle fishy, but it had great staying qualities, 
in fact, as I noted in my journal, it was " fine 
and filling." 

That afternoon we did not sail far, for even 
in Labrador it is calm sometimes, and we cast 
anchor in the Grand Bay of Piashte-bai, 
the nomenclature which I follow with great care 
is at times difficult. Here we were surrounded 
by granitic glacier-smoothed islands, cut by 
dark basaltic dykes, supporting but little vege- 
tation and that of an arctic type, a bleak 
coast. On one of these islands we found the 
remains of a white man's camp as shown by a 
circle of empty tins, and discovered the cause 
of his presence in some blasting operations 
which had been conducted for the purpose of 
obtaining a small quantity and poor quality 
of mica. The quest for " wealth in the rocks " 
proves often a disastrous will-o'-the-wisp for 
mankind. 

We visited another cormorant colony the 
117 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

next day, undeterred by our first experience, 
and found seventy-three nests on the bare 
rock, after which we bore away for the high 
headland of Quatachoo, which stood up like a 
sentinel among the multitude of low, prostrate 
islands where we took refuge from the stormy 
sea in a deep and quiet anchorage. The water 
was tinged the colour of tea from the river 
which poured with the roar of distant rapids 
from the mainland to the north. From a rocky 
hill, which rose about a hundred and twenty- 
five feet nearly sheer from the ocean, I could see 
between the scuds of fog that drifted landwards 
the low island-studded coast, barren for the 
most part, save for the trees in the gullies. 
The red and gray granitic rocks were relieved 
by great veins of white quartz, and cleft by 
dark basalt, while every deep hollow contained 
a snowdrift of unsullied whiteness, and all 
the seaward shores were surf- fringed. 

"The Night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, 
And shrieks the wild sea-mew." 

It was cold, it was barren, it was lonely, for there 

was no sign of man to be seen in any direction, 

yet it was a scene thoroughly to be enjoyed. 

118 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

There is a charm about the barren places of the 
earth not easily described in words, a charm 
that the artist attempts to transfer to canvas, 
and one that appeals often times with especial 
force to the naturalist. 

After an excellent dinner of broiled duck 
in the salle a manger of "La Belle," for I must 
not have the gentle reader imagine that I lived 
only on air and view and philosophy, we turned 
our prow again to the eastward, and sought 
through the stormy sea for the place the 
canards des roches, the curious many coloured 
harlequin ducks, were said to frequent, a place 
known in these parts as Watcheeshoo. On 
peering over some rocks here we saw three of 
these curious birds and watched them swim 
and fly away. 

While I was toasting my toes on the little 
10 x 1 6 inch stove at the entrance of the cuddy 
that night, listening to the cooing of the eiders, 
the gentle chiding laughter of the saddle-backs, 
and to the roar of the surf on the outer side of 
the island, while within was calm and peace- 
ful, watching the sun go down in a golden 
glory, and thinking of our luck in seeing the 
harlequins, a canoe silently glided alongside. 
119 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Kneeling in the bottom at the paddles were two 
Indians, one an old man with a scanty beard, 
the other a beardless youth. They came on 
board and shook hands, exchanged a few unin- 
telligible words with our men and departed as 
silently as they came. 

The Indians that I saw in canoes on the coast 
always kneeled and did not sit up on the 
thwarts as their white brothers often do. At 
Mingan one Indian refused to take me in his 
canoe unless I sat in the bottom and did not 
paddle. To escape that ignominy I kneeled at 
the bow paddle in the canoe of another Indian, 
but when I could bear the position no longer, 
and my knees were almost paralyzed, I made 
bold to raise myself to a sitting position on a 
basket and continued to paddle. My friend, 
who was sitting facing the Indian in the stern, 
said that his countenance expressed the utmost 
anxiety at this move on my part, and that drops 
of perspiration stood out on his brow. And I do 
not blame him, for he did not know, and I could 
not tell him whether I had ever been in a canoe 
before or not, and he probably was unable to 
swim. 

That evening Martial told us of his trip on 
120 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

the ice a hundred and fifty miles up the Romaine 
River one winter, hunting and dragging stores 
on a sled for men who were measuring and 
charting that great stream. His clever pan- 
tomime made his patois more intelligible, and 
every now and then he would favour us with 
snatches of song. He was a merry fellow. The 
songs of Mathias were slower and more solemn, 
and I often wondered whether they were not 
some of the old songs brought by the Acadians 
from France in 1605. His family name is 
among the list of those expelled from the basin 
of Minas in 1755. 

Sunday, May 3oth, was a cloudy, rainy day 
with a cold northeast wind, and, under reefed 
sails, we threaded the narrow passages among 
the islands in a manner that showed a wonderful 
knowledge of this region by our men. The charts 
we brought with us they never looked at, and 
indeed these charts showed but a small part of 
these islands and of the intricacies of the coast. 
Up Yellow Bay, a long, narrow land-locked pas- 
sage, we sailed with apparently no chance of 
escape, but suddenly we opened up what on 
the eastern coast would be called a " tickle," 
and through this we glided to the open sea. 

121 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

As we passed Pashasheeboo Bay, a name 
which Mathias delighted to roll on his tongue, we 
saw a solitary house, a lobster fisherman's. 
For a long distance we sailed among rocky 
islands, and we passed a lovely protected har- 
bour, forest skirted, which Mathias called le 
hdvre des sauvages, for, he said, fourteen or 
fifteen families of Indians camped there every 
summer, and I admired their taste. 

Soon the scene changed, and we skirted at a 
safe distance a ten mile, surf-lined beach, backed 
by cliffs and a dark spruce forest. The Na- 
besippi River flowed out in the middle of this 
beach, and, at the eastern end, the Agwanus 
River discharged. Here was a big church, a 
bigger trading-house and a dozen or two small 
houses of the habitants, all fishermen and trap- 
pers. Hundreds of terns or sea swallows, as 
they are called, graceful creatures, flew about 
us screaming, and it was evident that they 
were nesting on the barren islands. As the 
breakers appeared to form a continuous white 
line across the entrance to the harbour where 
a few fishing boats were riding at anchor, we 
concluded that the open sea was much pleas- 
anter, and we pushed on in our staunch boat. 

122 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

Two or three more miles of sand beach and then 
rocky islands uncounted appeared as we sailed by 
Washtawooka Bay. The land was everywhere 
terraced and flat topped, showing stages of 
elevation above the sea, the edges of the terraces 
marked with lines of snow which made good 
settings to the fringes of spruces. It was a glori- 
ous day's sail of over fifty miles in the storm and 
wet, but our boat was staunch, our crew were 
skilful, our oilskins tight, and the air and the 
water contained many objects dear to the or- 
nithologist. 

We reached Natashquan, literally " the place 
where the seals haul out," at the end of the after- 
noon, and cast anchor in the shallow, sandy 
harbour at the mouth of the little Natashquan, 
after running on to a sandbar. Mathias, while 
rowing us ashore in the canoe, after failing to 
make us understand in his native tongue, as- 
tonished us by an attempt in English. " Sirs," 
he said, for he afterwards told us he had learned 
English at Clark City, " the tide she rise low, 
maintenant." 

We were hospitably received by Martial's 
sister, who asked us, as I thought, whether 
we wished crabs, for breakfast next day. I 

123 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

eagerly acquiesced, having visions of broiled 
crabs, but there appeared on the table large 
pan-cakes much soaked in fat, crepes, a favour- 
ite dish along the coast, and one we found 
stood us in good stead on an all day tramp. 
There was, however, no crape, as my friend 
suggested there might be, on the door next day. 

Natashquan is a rambling village on both 
sides of the mouth of the Little Natashquan 
River. On the right bank was a small group 
of houses including the trading post, which 
went under the name of the Labrador Fur 
Company, and as the wife of the trader had 
just entertained eight Indians at dinner she 
was much wearied, yet on learning that we 
came from the States and talked English, - 
she herself came from Chicago, she and her 
husband made us at home, and gave us with 
the aid of a piano and her pleasant voice a 
musical evening. 

Another building on the right bank was the 
house of the telegraph operator, he of the 
wig and a face devoid of eyebrows, lashes and 
beard. The trader told us that some years 
ago this man and another strongly opposed the 
appointment of a certain schoolmaster by the 

124 




NEST AND EGGS OF DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT. 




A CORNER OF A CORMORANT ROOKERY AT SEAL ROCK. 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

priest, and in the heat of the argument, they 
exclaimed " may we lose every hair of our 
bodies if this vile one is appointed." The priest 
had his way, and they both began to lose their 
hair. One in fright and repentance made his 
peace with the priest, and all was well. Not 
so the stubborn telegraph operator, and to 
this day he is as devoid of hair as is an apple. 

On the eastern side of the river, which we 
crossed in one of the numerous small boats left 
on its sandy shores, were a few more houses and 
a large church and a priests' house. From the 
latter a straight path led along the top of a 
ridge, an old raised sea beach, bordered 
on either side with thickly growing white 
spruces. Beyond lay the beach four miles 
long, backed by shifting sand dunes, and at 
the end of the beach was the Great Natash- 
quan River with its little Indian village. 

It was on this beach that we saw a pair of 
piping plovers, with their sweet mournful 
calls, a bird that has not been recorded for 
Labrador before, and a splendid Caspian tern 
flew by so close that we could surely identify 
it. Audubon had found this bird here in 1833 
and Frazer in 1884 had discovered a breeding 
125 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

colony. We were glad to find that the bird 
still survived. 

Near the town the spruces and firs had been 
so cut away that the sand was sweeping back 
and had already overwhelmed one house. A 
large cross, evidently erected to stop the 
progress of the shifting dunes, stood in the 
midst of this waste. Heretic that I was, I 
could not help thinking it would have been 
wiser to plant beach-grass and trees. 

As we had been told at Quebec that the mail 
boat reaching Natashquan about the first of 
June would continue on to Harrington, we 
climbed aboard the " Aranmore " as she lay 
at anchor at a long and safe distance off Natash- 
quan, fully expecting to go on further east. 
What was our surprise when our old friend 
Captain Hearn turned her prow westward 
again, and my hopes of glimpses of the bird 
colonies of Cape Whittle and of Dr. Grenfell's 
hospital at Harrington were dashed. However, 
we were glad to return to Esquimaux Point, 
and I knew by previous experience that a 
Labrador steamer, like life itself, was very 
uncertain. 

As unfavourable winds had prevented us 

126 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

from reaching Bald Island near Betchewun 
on this cruise, we visited it on the 8th and Qth 
of June by sailing from Esquimaux Point in 
" La Belle Marguerite." The island is of about 
a dozen acres in extent, and presents to the 
sea turreted and arched limestone cliffs from 
fifteen to thirty feet high. Its flat top was 
covered with deep black soil, on which a forest 
of giant stalks of cow parsnip were still stand- 
ing from the previous summer. In this loose 
soil and under the rocks were numerous bur- 
rows of puffins, or perroquets, as they are uni- 
versally called on the Labrador coast. Each 
burrow was from two to three feet long, and, 
at the end, the owner was usually sitting on her 
single dirty white egg in a nest of straw. 

Extraordinary birds are these puffins, about 
150 of whom were to be constantly seen flying 
and swimming about the island. Their large 
parrot-like red bill, their pale gray spectacled 
face and black collar, and their short, chunky 
build made them appear grotesque on the water 
or in flight, and even more grotesque when they 
stood bolt upright on the rocks, and comically 
anxious when they walked about near us. Their 
bills in the breeding season, when examined 
127 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

carefully, are seen to be scarlet, with a steel 
blue base on the lower mandible, a white line 
on the upper and an orange patch at the com- 
misure. There is a curious blue horny spur 
above the eye, and the edges of the eyelid are 
vermilion, while the inside of the mouth is a 
deep gamboge yellow, and the feet are orange 
red. 

Another bird that later in the season laid its 
eggs on this island, one can not say nested, for 
the egg is deposited on the bare rock, was the 
razor-billed auk, and we saw a little company of 
seventeen of these birds flying about the island, 
all that was left of the throngs that bred in that 
region in Audubon's day. Here the bill is jet 
black ornamented with a curved white line, 
and wonderfully set off, when the bird opens 
its mouth, by the brilliant yellow lining of that 
cavity. The birds were swimming about in 
little bands with their tails cocked up, and were 
evidently discussing matrimonial plans. 

One does not expect to pick up the eggs of 
wood birds at sea, but on our return from Bald 
Island we were obliged to anchor behind Little 
St. Charles Island, where a fishing boat from 
Esquimaux Point had also taken refuge from 
123 



CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 

the high wind. An exchange of shouted civil- 
ities between the two boats resulted, in which 
it appeared, for our fame had spread, 
that some eggs of the spruce partridge, greatly 
desired by my companion, had just been 
found. In fact the fisherman while ashore 
for wood had put his foot into the nest, and 
broken four of the twelve eggs. However, 
the remainder, beautifully speckled with brown, 
were gratefully received. 

I have now finished a cursory survey of the 
Labrador coast from its western point to Na- 
tashquan, a distance of 250 miles. In another 
book I attempted to describe the 600 miles of 
coast between Bradore and Nain. The hiatus 
of about 240 miles between Natashquan and 
Bradore was explored and described by Audu- 
bon in 1833, and I hope some day to follow in his 
steps; in the meantime it is a satisfaction to 
feel that the gap in one's narrative is so well 
filled. 



129 



CHAPTER VI 

THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

" In such like Toils and Sports, the Year goes round, 
And for each day, some Work or Pleasure's found." 

Cartwright. 

TN the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
* tury an adventurous Englishman spent 
sixteen years on the bleak eastern Labrador 
coast engaged in fishing, trapping and hunting, 
and in trading with the aborigines. Captain 
Cartwright 's Journal, originally published in 
1793, shows the evident joy of the man in his 
rugged life on those shores, and his appreciation 
of its attractions, notwithstanding the severity 
of its climate and its loneliness. Although, as 
a younger son in an old family of depleted 
fortunes, his ostensible object was the accumula- 
tion of money, it is evident that the spirit of 
sport and adventure, and not the desire to 
amass a fortune, was his guiding star. Origi- 
nally possessed of independence of character, 

130 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

his life in Labrador further developed it, as 
such a life naturally would, and instead of 
leading the trivial humdrum life of the average 
sporting squire, which would probably have 
been his lot if he had settled down at home, he 
became a careful observer and an accurate 
recorder of animal and vegetable nature, a 
skilful leader of men, and just in all his relations 
with them, notably so in his relations with the 
savages, both Eskimo and Indian, an in- 
teresting figure indeed in the early days of the 
Labrador coast. 

This same joy of living in remote parts, away 
from the conventional life of the cities, this 
same love of a wild life with all its hardships 
and struggles, is still an attribute of humanity 
not difficult to find. The conventional city 
life has been of very recent advent in the his- 
tory of the human race ; it is a mere speck in 
his inheritance of the past, and we all tend to 
revert to the savage. The man who does not is 
sincerely to be pitied ; he does not know the 
full joy of living. 

Three friends that I made on this Labrador 
coast each suggested in his own way my old 
friend Cartwright. The first was a New Eng- 

131 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

lander from a poky little suburb of a great city, 
a clear-eyed, well-bronzed, rosy-cheeked man, 
spare and sinewy. He had spent fourteen years 
on this coast and he loved the life, and so did his 
wife, who joined with him in trapping and 
shooting. They lived in a comfortable house 
in a lovely bay protected by a fringe of pointed 
firs and higher land on the north, and by an 
outlying island on the south. A spring of 
clear cold water bubbled forth summer and 
winter on the little beach in front of the house. 
They had no neighbours but the white-throated 
sparrows and hermit thrushes in summer, the 
ptarmigan and snow buntings in winter, for 
the nearest settlement was eighteen miles 
away, but they did not lack for occupation and 
diversion, and they had much of interest to 
show and talk about when they hospitably 
received us at their table. Of birds, as always 
when we met intelligent people, we talked much, 
and our host showed us some stuffed birds, his 
own handiwork, including an albino murre, and, 
of live birds, a pair of black ducks he had 
brought up as pets. Of trapping he had many 
tales to tell, both of his successes and failures. 
He had that day returned from setting some 

132 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

great bear-traps, for in the spring when the 
bears first come out from their winter hiberna- 
tion, their fur is in good condition. 

Of the common belief, so frequently enlarged 
upon by writers of popular natural history, that 
animals frequently bite off their own legs to 
free themselves from traps, he had no regard. 
In fact, although he said the animal sometimes 
eats the severed and dead foot under the trap, 
he had found no evidence of their biting the 
flesh or bone above the trap. By twisting and 
pulling, however, in their attempts to get away, 
he said the animal not infrequently escapes and 
leaves the foot behind. In the case of the 
rabbit this freeing from the trap by the loss of 
a foot is not uncommon, an accident that the 
slender bones and tender skin of this animal 
would easily account for, while the usual 
explanation, in an animal accustomed to use 
its teeth on bark and other vegetable substances 
only, he deemed very improbable. Although I 
had never considered the subject before, and 
had accepted the usual explanation, I believe he 
is right, for the method of escape from a trap 
by biting off the foot would be a most unnatural 
procedure, and would call for a considerable 
133 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

amount of reasoning power, while the struggle 
ending in breaking away would be the natural 
and instinctive one. 

Of shooting seals with a rifle he had much to 
tell us, and of the pleasures of this pursuit 
conducted by lying down covered with a sack 
on a reef, and acting and grunting hoarsely 
like the animal; and he showed us some 
beautiful skins both of the bay seal and of the 
horse-head. Between the tenth of June and the 
tenth of July he catches seals in nets, and one 
hundred and eighty pelts were the result of 
his work the year before. 

Of his dogs he spoke with great affection, 
and they massive brutes, some Eskimo, 
some half Newfoundland fully reciprocated 
it. To one who is familiar with the cruel way 
in which many of the Eskimo dogs are treated 
on the eastern Labrador coast, it was a pleasure 
to see the different treatment accorded them 
here. Unfortunately an epidemic among the 
dogs had spread like wild -fire along the coast 
the winter before, and many of the most 
valued animals were dead, some within the 
space of a day after the first seizure. 

My New England Cartwright had much to 

134 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

say of the intelligence and strength of some of 
these, and of the pleasure of speeding over the 
icy highways that line the coast in winter 
behind a team of these useful animals. The 
winter season, instead of shutting him up to 
wait impatiently for milder weather, was a sea- 
son of great interest and pleasure, the trapping 
season and the season for much travelling. In 
summer his means of transportation was a 
staunch little schooner, about the size of our 
" Belle Marguerite," to which he had just applied 
a fresh coat of paint, and had got ready for the 
launching. The life of this former New Eng- 
lander was a varied and interesting one, and I 
could not help comparing it with the life he 
would have led if he had remained in the 
suburb of the great city. 

Of the second figure in this company of three 
I speak with particular admiration and respect. 
He is a Belgian who has lived here for thirteen 
years and married a Labradorian; both he 
and his charming wife and sister-in-law re- 
ceived us with great courtesy and hospitality. 
He is an interesting and picturesque figure, a 
man in many respects like Cartwright, although 
superficially very different, and belonging to 

135 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

a different nation. At the head of a little bay 
close by the discharge of a tumultuous river 
on a granitic glacier-smoothed rock he has 
built his house, the finest house I have seen 
on all the Labrador coast. The roar of the 
rapids beside him, and the subdued murmur of 
the distant cataract in the forest, is always in 
his ears. On the one side the sun rises over 
the bay with its rocky islets, and sets on the 
other behind the barren hills which terminate 
his view over the dark spruce forest. On the 
shore of the bay below him are the half dozen 
houses of the habitants, and a tiny chapel 
completes the picture of the little village, while 
several fishing boats ride at anchor a stone's 
throw away. 

On the opposite side of the river are some 
large enclosures that at once attracted our at- 
tention. These are parks for the breeding of 
black foxes, whose skins, beautiful in them- 
selves, have been greatly enhanced in value 
by the whims of royal fashion until they have 
become one of the most precious products of 
the Labrador coast. To the trapper in the 
wilds they are lucky incidents, a much hoped 
for dream which may never be realized. To 

136 




A BLACK FOX PARK AT PIASHTE-BAI. 




PIASHTE-BAI RIVER AND LAKE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE HIGH LAND 

OF THE INTERIOR. 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

produce these in captivity has been one of the 
many schemes of the active brain of this 
Belgian Cartwright, and he has devoted many 
years to the study of the subject. He has 
five or six parks each of an acre and a half in 
extent, surrounded by strong wire netting 
fences, supported by posts eighteen feet tall. 
An overhang at the top prevents the escape 
of the active inhabitants above, while the solid 
Laurentian rock is an effectual bar below. 
Each park contains but one family, and they 
have plenty of room to roam, and plenty of 
place for concealment among the stunted 
spruces. They live well, for lobsters are 
especially procured for their table. I caught a 
glimpse of one splendid fellow running about 
with his thousand dollar coat. We were told 
that these skins are of more value than those 
of wild ones, for the animals are well looked 
after and their food supply never fails them. 
It is not, as with Indians and wild foxes, a 
short feast and a long famine. In July they 
bring forth their litters of five to nine each, and 
breed true. 

The black fox is merely a colour-phase of 
the common red fox, and not a separate species. 
137 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

The red fox varies from the common form, 
which is a rich fulvous red with a white tip 
to the tail and small black markings on feet and 
ears, through certain well marked stages, 
known as the cross or patch fox, and the silver, 
to the black fox. In the cross fox the feet, 
legs and under parts are black, while red more 
or less mixed and overlaying black extends 
over the head and back. In the silver fox 
the red is nearly absent, and the fur is dark at 
the base, while the tips of the hairs are white 
or gray. In the pure black fox the white or 
silver tips to the hairs are everywhere elimi- 
nated, except at the tip of the tail, which always 
remains white. The red phase is of course the 
most abundant form, while the others increase 
in rarity in the order giyen. The black is the 
rarest, and a good black fox skin brings an 
extremely high price. The Fur Trade Review 
for 1907 says: "The fashion for this article 
continues, and the fine dark skins are specially 
in demand the highest priced skin realized 
^440 " ($2,140). Our Belgian friend told us he 
had obtained from $400 to $1,400 for his skins, 
and averaged $700. After five or six years he 
had succeeded in eliminating all the red from 

138 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

their furs, and the animals were now breeding 
true and producing only the black phase. 

The United States Department of Agriculture 
has recently published a farmer's bulletin on 
the subject of silver fox farming, by Wilfred 
H. Osgood. It concludes that fox farming 
should never be attempted south of the southern 
boundary of the Canadian zone, and it states 
by way of summary that : ' ' Like most new 
enterprises, fox raising is a business regarding 
which opinions vary. The favourable facts are 
that silver foxes are easily and securely kept 
in simple wire enclosures; that suitable food 
for them is cheap and easily obtainable; that 
they are not subject to serious diseases, and 
that their disposition and the colour of their 
fur can be improved by selective breeding. 
Opposed to these are the unfavourable facts 
that they are by nature suspicious, nervous, and 
not inclined to repose confidence in man; and 
that, largely for these reasons, they do not 
breed regularly and successfully, except when 
cared for by experienced persons more or less 
gifted in handling them. 

" The number of persons now engaged in the 
business is relatively small, and the work is 

139 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

still experimental, yet many of the initial 
difficulties have already been overcome. Nu- 
merous minor failures seem explainable in large 
measure, and are offset by several conspicuous 
successes. It is therefore probable that under 
proper management fox raising will be de- 
veloped into a profitable industry, and it is 
perhaps not too much to expect that a domestic 
breed of foxes will be produced. Only time 
will show how such expectations will be realized, 
but present indications must be regarded as 
very encouraging." 

The house of this Belgian Cartwright did not 
remind one of Labrador, although many of 
the trophies displayed on its walls were products 
of the country. The rooms were large and 
comfortable, with ample doors and windows. 
One room suggested an armoury, as it contained 
racks of guns of all sizes and patterns, from the 
newest hammerless breech loaders to the old- 
time muzzle loader with an elongated barrel. 
The window-sills of the billiard-room were lined 
with flowering plants, and the walls contained 
many products of the chase, boars' heads 
from Europe and caribou antlers, seal skins 
and bear skins from the neighbourhood. A 

HO 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

walrus skull and an Eskimo harpoon from the 
northeastern coast hung near some cabinets 
of mounted birds, the product of his gun along 
the coast. Among these we found a blue jay, 
a bird hitherto unrecorded for Labrador. This 
bird he had shot the previous winter not far 
from his house; later we saw a single bird of 
this species at Mingan, so that our record for 
this bird for Labrador is very satisfactory. 

One of the most interesting departments of 
the household was the refrigerating plant, built 
after the master's own design. It consisted of 
a detached building in which were several 
zinc-lined chests surrounded by a freezing 
mixture of snow and salt. In these chests, 
frozen solidly, was game of all sorts, mostly 
obtained in winter for summer use. Trout and 
porcupines, haunch of caribou and of beaver 
and of other animals, for our host, like Cart- 
wright of old, being of independent mind and 
not subservient to custom, was fond of trying 
the flesh of animals not commonly used as food. 
Among the birds were willow ptarmigan, white 
as snow, with the exception of their black tails 
and the black centres of their wing quills, and 
a couple of splendid Barrow's golden-eye ducks. 

141 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

These were at once courteously given us for our 
collections. 

Of the man himself it is almost unnecessary 
to speak; the environment which he created 
is sufficient to describe him. Ardently devoted 
to the chase, a good shot, interested in natural 
history, a clever artist, a quick and accurate 
observer, he afforded us many delightful hours 
spent in his company, for we were so fortunate 
as to meet him not only as guests at his house, 
but at several other places on the coast where 
he had gone to meet Indians to trade for their 
furs and incidentally to fish and to shoot. His 
observations on birds, for one who had not 
made an especial study of the subject, were 
particularly acute and interesting, and he 
entered with ardour at our suggestion upon a 
more careful and scientific study of ornithology. 
Like Cartwright he had kept a journal of his 
daily life and observations. 

Like his prototype Cartwright, also, he was 
interesting in figure and in dress. Picture to 
yourself a rather small man with pointed beard 
and moustaches, piercing black eyes lighted 
up with kindliness and vivacity, and a lithe 
frame showing great vigour and activity. In 
142 




THREE LITTLE INDIAN GIRLS. 




TWO MONTAGNAIS COMPANIONS AT MINGAN, 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

the field he wore a dark green corduroy suit of 
knickerbockers, and a tall pointed cap made of 
otters' tails. His gun hung from his shoulder 
suspended by a strap. A photograph of him 
I saw in the house of one of his numerous 
friends on the coast shows him in winter dress. 
He is on snow-shoes, and is clad entirely in 
white with the exception of his dark seal-skin 
boots and of the embroidery on the cuffs of 
his mittens. His dark eyes, moustaches and 
beard contrast well with the white pointed hood 
which terminates, Eskimo-like, the upper part 
of the costume. A gun is held over his left 
shoulder, and a fine black fox, as in the old 
print of Cartwright, is slung under his right; 
the handle of a hunter's axe appears behind. 

A man is often damned by his neighbours and 
acquaintances, but everywhere we went on the 
coast, people of all sorts spoke well of our 
Belgian Cartwright. They all recognized his 
capabilities and his constant courtesy. Some 
spoke of his great accuracy of aim with shot- 
gun or rifle, others of his eccentricity in sitting 
down to a dinner of fox or some other unheard 
of meat, and others again of his skill in bil- 
liards. The story goes that when fishermen or 

143 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

trappers visit him who have never before met 
with such a piece of civilization as a billiard 
table, he has innocently amused himself by 
showing them grotesque ways of playing, using 
the butt end of the cue or pushing it with both 
hands as gravely as if it were the approved 
method, but, however he plays, he is easily a 
match for half a dozen of them. 

I am sure we shall never forget him nor the 
dinner at his house. After several days' cruising 
in " La Belle Marguerite " we landed at his little 
bay, and paid our respects to him. Our cre- 
dentials as scientific bird students obtained 
from the department of Colonization, Mines 
and Fisheries of Quebec served here as else- 
where to introduce us, and we were soon deep 
in a laboured conversation on the subject of 
the birds of Labrador. Laboured the con- 
versation certainly was on our parts, for, as 
our host spoke only French, we were obliged 
to resort at times to our guide, companion and 
friend a pocket conversational dictionary. 

As we beheld ourselves for the first time for 
many days in the mirror of the dressing-room 
where our host left us to prepare for dinner, our 
hearts failed us, and I left my friend con- 

144 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

templating his ragged hunting suit and two 
weeks' beard in dismay, while I courageously 
descended to the salon in my a little less ragged 
khakies. Our host wore green corduroy knicker- 
bockers, silk stockings and pumps, the ladies 
were becomingly attired in delicate white 
material of Parisian and not Labrador make, 
when my friend sailed into the room with 
great dignity in his flannel shirt sleeves and 
ancient " fluffy " leather waistcoat. He con- 
fessed to me afterwards that the anguish of 
deciding between a shrunken, stained and torn 
shooting jacket on the one hand and shirt 
sleeves on the other was intense, but the 
" fluffy " leather waistcoat turned the scale 
in favour of the latter unpardonable costume. 
However, we endeavoured to make up for the 
poverty of our clothes by the elegance of our 
conversation, and we drank the health of the 
madame and la belle soeur in the red wine of 
sunny France with carefully chosen phrases 
from our little dictionary. I could not help 
thinking of the tramps in Erminie. A five 
course dinner with all the " frills " on the 
Labrador coast was certainly a surprise. 

The third in this triumvirate of men of 

145 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

original ideas presented an entirely different 
figure from the last. A tall, raw-boned Yankee, 
a painter by trade, and at first sight an un- 
interesting personality. As we came to know 
the man more intimately, however, and as he 
revealed to us his history, his plans and his 
views of life, we could not but admire and be 
attracted by him. Although in appearance, 
voice and conversation he was a typical Yankee, 
he "hailed from" Western Massachusetts, 
his name was evidently French. His ancestors, it 
appeared, had come from France and settled 
at Quebec, where they prospered. His great 
grandfather, visiting the mother country, left 
his affairs in the hands of the priests to guard 
and preserve. He died abroad and his son 
and grandson, the latter the father of our 
hero, failed to claim their patrimony from 
the Church, but moved to a little village in 
New England where our Yankee Cartwright 
grew up to the humble trade of house-painter. 
It was evident, however, that the adventurous 
and independent blood of his ancestors coursed 
through his veins, and he refused to remain in 
his native town, but travelled from place to 
place plying his trade, but fretting all the time 

146 



THREE MODERN CARTWRIGHTS 

at the bondage of the trade-unions. Finally 
the spirit moved him to visit in a brief vacation 
the home of his ancestors in Quebec, and while 
there he stumbled on the mail steamer about 
to leave for the Labrador Coast. He took 
passage, intending to return by the same boat, 
but at Seven Islands he kindly offered to help 
out for a few days in painting the church, 
taking the place of a painter who had fallen ill. 
This was three years ago and he has been the 
ecclesiastical painter along the coast ever since, 
kept there partly by the entreaties of the 
priests, but chiefly, he admitted, by his enjoy- 
ment of the independence of the life, and the 
fact that he was his own master and not subject 
to walking delegates. He could work over 
time to his heart's content, and do his very 
best without fear of disparaging another. He 
was particularly enthusiastic about the health- 
fulness of the climate, and, like Cartwright of 
old, declared that, although the thermometer 
went many degrees below zero in the winter, 
he never felt chilly as at home. 

His plans for the future were certainly 
original and were all carefully arranged. Al- 
though he thoroughly enjoyed his work and the 

147 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

free hand he had in it, he had decided that a 
year from that summer he would join forces 
with some good Indian friends of his, and go 
with them into the interior on their regular 
hunting and trapping expeditions, not to 
emerge until the following June. In this way 
he expected to satisfy his love for adventure 
and wild life, and to lay in a stock of furs with 
which to astonish his New England friends. 

My modern Cartwrights are all good men and 
true. 



148 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

" Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness." 

Cowper. 

THE Labrador peninsula is a region well 
adapted for fur-bearing animals. Along 
the edges on the eastern and southern coasts the 
white settler has long since well-nigh exter- 
minated or driven off these animals with the 
notable exception of the crafty fox, but the 
interior still serves as a habitation and fairly 
safe refuge for many beasts, although their 
numbers are considerably diminished owing to 
extensive fires * that have swept the country, 
and to constant persecution. Most of the 
interior is unexplored by the white man, yet 
his influence through powder and ball supplied 

1 According to Hind immense forest fires occurred in 
Labrador in 1785, 1814, 1857 and 1859, and a very extensive 
one I was told by Mr. J. A. Wilson, the factor at Mingan, 
occurred about 40 years ago. 

149 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

to the Indians, and his eagerness for trade has 
had its effect on the native animals. 

Hind has penetrated into the interior about 
one hundred and fifty miles by way of the 
Moisie River. Cabot has explored from the 
eastern coast to the valley of the George River, 
while Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, and following 
closely in her steps, Dillon Wallace, have 
travelled up the valley of the Nascaupee from 
the Northwest River, crossed Lake Michikamau 
and the height of land and descended the 
George River to Ungava Bay. 

But the explorer who has traversed Labrador 
far more than all of these, and one who has 
added most to our accurate knowledge of the 
interior, is the Canadian geologist, A. P. Low. 
He has done his work quietly and unheralded, 
and the results are buried among the other 
documents of the Canadian Geological Survey. 
To tell of all his doings would be long, but 
among other things he has crossed Labrador 
in a canoe from south to north by way of Lake 
Mistassini, the East Main, Kaniapiskau and 
Koksoak Rivers. He has also ascended the 
Hamilton River, portaged by the Grand Falls, 
grand indeed, for they descend 760 feet in 

150 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

twelve miles and fall 302 feet sheer, and 
explored Lake Michikamau. From the Ham- 
ilton River he ascended the Attikonak, 
and, by way of the Romaine and the St. John 
Rivers, descended to the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence. 

Yet after all the greater part of this interior 
of Labrador is a vast wilderness, still unspoiled 
by the whites, still a happy hunting-ground for 
the Indians. The Eskimos, true sea-dogs that 
they are, keep to the sea-coast, except in the 
far north beyond the Koksoak River. Of the 
Indians there are two main tribes in Labrador, 
divisions of the Cree branch of the great 
Algonquin family. North of the Hamilton 
River dwell the Nascaupees, while south of this 
grand natural boundary the Montagnais or 
Mountaineers have their migratory homes. 
Besides these is the small tribe of coastal 
Indians of Hudson Bay. 

Originally dwelling further to the west these 
Algon quins were gradually driven east and 
north during the i6th and iyth centuries by 
the terrible Iroquois, whose name even now 
strikes terror to their hearts and serves as a 
bogey to frighten their children. The Iroquois 

151 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

were said to have pursued them at one time 
as far as the Natashquan River. With the 
Eskimos, whom the Indians always hated and 
despised and with whom they do not inter- 
marry, they were formerly always at war. 
While the Eskimos in the time of Jacques 
Cartier inhabited the whole of the eastern and 
even some of the southern coast, probably as 
far west as the Eskimo River, they are now 
not found south of Hamilton Inlet, or Es- 
quimaux Bay as it was formerly called. Even 
as late as the time of Cartwright, in the latter 
part of the i8th century, the Eskimos came as 
far south as the region about the Straits of 
Belle Isle. Armed with guns procured from 
the French, the Indians, although terrified by 
the Iroquois, were able to strike terror in turn 
into the hearts of the Eskimos who fell back 
before their onslaughts and deserted this 
southern region. Battle Harbour is said to 
have received its name from one of the last 
battles fought by these two aboriginal races. 
This could hardly have been the case, however, 
for Cartwright mentions the name Battle 
Harbour in his Journal, although he does not 
allude to any fight there between the two races, 

152 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

and Eskimos at that time dwelt as far south as 
Cape Charles. 

One beautiful day the last of May when " La 
Belle Marguerite " was anchored in a sheltered 
little cove among Les Isles des Corneilles, I was 
delighted by a cry from Mathias of " Les 
sauvages ! " a cry which, in the earlier 
history of French-speaking America, has times 
innumerable struck terror into the heart of 
the white man. Not so in this case, for les 
sauvages here are no longer savage, they are 
but a peaceful remnant of their old selves, and, 
being well treated by the white man, treat him 
well in return, as indeed they have always done 
when dealt with in this unusual manner. Two 
barges like our own had sailed into a neighbour- 
ing cove, and, through the glass, I could see a 
motley crowd of men, women, children and 
dogs tumbling into canoes and going ashore. 
They soon were grouped about a fire and were 
evidently cooking and eating their breakfast, 
which, judging from the shells seen later, 
consisted of roasted eiders' eggs. A brilliant 
patch of colour they made on the barren hill- 
side, that contrasted well with the gray of the 
lichen-covered rocks, the green of the firs, and 

153 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

the white of the snowbanks. On visiting them 
I found a camp well on the way to completion. 
Each was doing his or her part, chiefly hers. 
The women were gathering balsam boughs and 
thatching them into thick springy beds for 
their wigwams, which were to be erected in 
flat places from which they had first scratched 
away the moss. A man and woman were 
busily engaged in scraping the hair from a seal 
skin, keeping it wet in a pot of water placed 
between them, the first stage in the manu- 
facture of skin-boots. Children and dogs were 
everywhere, and while the former showed 
timidity and even terror, the latter showed 
belligerency at my approach. The terror dis- 
played by the little Indian children at the sight 
of a stranger was as marked as was the fear- 
lessness and placidity on the part of the infant- 
in-arms under the same circumstances. 

There seemed to be four families, five men 
and five or six women young and old, seven or 
eight girls and boys of all ages, and an infant, 
not to mention numerous Indian dogs and a 
cat. 

My communications with them were in- 
teresting to me, but not very satisfactory, as I 
154 




INDIANS SHAVING "SEAL SKIN AT THE ISLES DES CORNEILLES. 




THE PAPOOSE. 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

could not tinders tand their language, nor they 
mine, with one exception in the case of an 
elderly man, who from time to time ejaculated 
a few words of French, and who appeared to 
understand some of my broken sentences in the 
same language. However, all were pleasant and 
jolly, and there was considerable laughter, 
probably at my expense, a laughter in which 
I joined as I wished to appear sociable and 
was unable to express myself in any other 
way. 

The faces of these people were dark olive 
brown in colour, and glistened in the sun as if 
they had been oiled, as I suspect was indeed 
the case with some; their noses were aquiline; 
their eyes were black and rather narrow and 
in some set aslant as in the Mongolian type. 
A few showed signs of admixture with the 
white race. 

While the men wore their straight black hair 
rather long about the neck, the women and 
girls had theirs tied up in tight oblong knots 
or rolls wound with black cloth in front of the 
ears, forming a conspicuous and characteristic 
mark of their sex, absent only in very young 
children. The women and girls all wore pic- 
155 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

turesque caps of red and dark blue broadcloth 
in alternate stripes in shape like a liberty cap. 
The bands of these caps were ornamented in 
bead- work which seemed to increase in extent 
with the increasing years of the wearer. The 
men's head gear was a more prosaic black cloth 
cap with a visor. Both sexes wore either long 
seal skin boots with the hair shaved off, or, 
as was usually the case, low caribou skin mocca- 
sins, more or less ornamented, and thick woollen 
stockings, of bright primitive colours, red, 
green, white, blue and purple, in stripes. These 
stockings in the case of the men, were pulled up 
to the knees over the trousers, which were the 
ordinary cylindrical affairs of civilization, weath- 
ered from black or brown, to a good neutral 
tint. A rough cloth jacket or one of dirty white 
canvas completed the costume in the men, 
which was given a touch of colour by a red or 
blue handkerchief tied about the neck and 
shoulders. 

The women wore stout woollen skirts, gen- 
erally of dark plaid, their costume completed 
above by a bodice of red or plaid, fitting snugly 
about their powerful waists and shoulders, and 
by a coloured handkerchief that was knotted 

156 




WIGWAM IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION AT MINGAN. 




COMPLETED WIGWAM. 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

or folded about the neck. The infant was bound 
up as all proper Indian papooses are, with a 
criss-cross of lacings over an abundance of 
wrappings, the whole forming a bundle that 
could as easily be handled, and that made as 
little fuss as a small bag of flour. 

The common posture taken by these Indians 
was a kneeling one, with the body resting on 
the heels as shown in several of the photographs, 
a position very difficult to maintain for any 
length of time by a white man. This is the 
same posture commonly assumed by the Jap- 
anese as shown in the familiar pictures of these 
people grouped about tea-trays. According to 
Professor Okakura Yoshisaburo of Tokio, the 
Japanese and Koreans alone of Asiatic peoples 
habitually adopt this posture, while the Chinese 
sit as do the Europeans. 

The wigwams of this people that I saw at 
various places along the coast were of three 
sorts: the ordinary cotton wall-tent of the 
white man, the wigwam made of straight 
slender poles set in a circle and leaning in to 
the centre, and the lodge of birch sticks stuck 
in the ground in a circle or oval, and bent so 
as to form a low rounded or oval structure, 

157 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

strengthened by split birch saplings interwoven 
at right angles. These last two forms of dwelling 
were covered with canvas, I saw none 
covered with skins or birch bark. Nearly all 
contained small oblong sheet-iron stoves with 
tiny stove-pipes that emerged between the 
sticks at the top of the wigwam. Much of their 
cooking seemed to be done at fires outside, 
where a large pot was to be seen hanging from a 
wooden bar between two poles. 

These friends of mine, these " savages " at 
the Isles of the Crow, were not mercenary, they 
had nothing to sell, but having completed the 
labours of the year in the interior in trapping for 
furs, and having sold the products to the 
traders, they were, like ladies and gentlemen, 
travelling about visiting their friends and 
spending their summer's vacation at the 
sea-side. Later they would attend religious 
services. 

That they were making disastrous inroads on 
the sea-birds, and contributing to their ex- 
termination, there was no doubt, but it must 
be remembered that before the arrival of the 
whites, when the Indians were in larger numbers 
along this coast, the sea-birds easily held their 

158 




WIGWAM AND INDIAN FAMILY AT PIASHTE-BAI. 




INDIANS AT THE ISLES DES CORNEILLES. 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

own. The moderate and natural pruning of the 
savages did no appreciable harm. It is the 
white man that has brought the birds so low by 
systematic egging, and, although the eggs are 
not exported in schooners to Halifax now as in 
Audubon's day, a continuous robbery of the 
eggs by the fishermen is still kept up along the 
coast. And they can hardly be blamed, for 
eiders' eggs are easily found and make delicious 
eating. But, as I have said in another place, 1 
it is a great pity that these men should be 
allowed to " kill the goose that lays the golden 
egg," and that they should not be taught like 
the Norwegians to protect the birds, and take 
in return for the trouble a moderate amount of 
down and eggs. This might be made an in- 
dustry of immense and increasing value to the 
entire coast, for there is no region better adapted 
to the needs of the eider duck, but as long as 
the reckless methods now employed are con- 
tinued, and as long as guns are so constantly 
in use in the nesting season, so long will this 
war of extermination go on until there are no 
birds left. Would that a Labrador St. Cuth- 
bert might arise who would bless and tame 
1 Along the Labrador Coast, Boston, 1904, pp. 263, 264. 
159 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

these eiders! The nesting birds, particularly 
the females, are easily shot, and at Piashte-bai 
I saw several of their carcasses spitted and 
being dried and smoked in front of an Indian 
wigwam. 

We met with several similar camping parties 
of Indians, although we were rather too early 
in the season to find many such, but at Mingan 
and at the Natashquan River we saw large 
numbers of the Montagnais. At the latter 
place they have a small village of wooden 
houses on the right bank of the mouth of the 
Great Natashquan River some four miles from 
the white settlement at the Little Natashquan. 
Having spent the winter in the interior, hunting 
and trapping, they had arrived here in May, and 
it happened on May 3ist, the day we tramped 
over through the dunes and along the beach 
from Natashquan, that we arrived just as the 
Indians were embarking for Musquarro. This 
point, some fifteen miles farther down the 
coast, is an Indian mission, presided over by 
a Roman Catholic priest, who goes there once a 
year at this season for the purpose of celebrating 
the various rites of the church feasts and 
fasts, baptisms, marriages and funeral services 

160 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

for the benefit and spiritual health of these 
Indians. Indeed the Musquarro missionary 
had come down on the steamer with us, a 
tall, austere man, a typical robe noir. It was 
in 1660 that the Indians of Seven Islands re- 
quested the Jesuits at Tadousac to send them a 
robe noir, as they dared not go to Tadousac for 
fear of the Iroquois. 

At Musquarro the Indians stay several weeks 
enjoying their religious life, for besides the sale 
of their furs, one of the chief objects of their 
visit to the coast is the attainment of a veneer 
of Christianity. With this veneer they return 
to the Natashquan River and ascend it in 
August for another winter's work in the interior, 
where, doubtless, some of the veneer wears off, 
and a little paganism crops out. 

Cabot says: "Under the strict injunctions 
of the Gulf missionaries, the sound of the 
te'uehigan, 'the ceremonial drum,' is not heard 
on the summer reserve, but once beyond hearing 
of the missions some remnant of the old rites 
is not far to seek. On the other hand, the 
church calendar is carried everywhere over 
the Montagnais country; each day a pin is 
moved forward and pinned through the paper 

161 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

at the succeeding date, and feast-days and 
Sundays are pretty well observed." r 

The day was a dark and lowering one this 
3ist of May; low-lying clouds scudded across 
the sky, the sand-dunes were gray and for- 
bidding, the river, over a mile wide here at the 
mouth, the colour of lead. Loons were driving 
north before the chilling blasts, in a continuous 
stream, two or three every few minutes, and a 
migrating band of tree swallows, with promise 
of summer, flew joyously about the great river, 
while on the bleak shore a picturesque scene 
was being enacted by the Indians, the bright 
colours of whose costumes relieved the sombre 
gray ness of river and sky and shore. 

They were all intent on their purpose, these 
savages of the Natashquan, and paid scant 
attention to us, as they hastened down over 
the sands to the shore of the river, carrying their 
packs and pots and babies, men, women and 
children, dogs and even cats, all higgledy- 
piggledy, and all in a great hurry to be off. 
There were perhaps eight or ten families in all, 
men in the prime of life, with erect, wiry 

1 Labrador, by Wilfred T. Grenfell and others, New 
York, 1909, pp. 224, 225. 

162 




LOADING THE CANOE. 




THE EMBARKATION OF THE MONTAGNAIS AT NATASHQUAN FOR MUSQUARRO 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

figures and bright, even handsome faces, most 
of them of medium height but some noticeably 
tall; old men with stragglng moustaches and 
beards, and shrunken but still erect figures; 
women of all ages, the old, wrinkled and hag- 
like with dirty gray complexions, the young, 
clear-eyed and plump, their smooth, olive- 
brown skins tinged with rose on the cheeks, 
attractive to look upon; young boys and girls 
and stolid papooses. The small slinking fox- 
like Indian dog, black and tan in colour, was 
everywhere, each one nervously anxious not to 
be left behind. Every family possessed a cat, 
either carried in arms, or harnessed and straining 
at the leash, or again following free like a dog, 
anxious not to get its feet wet on the beach, 
but evidently still more anxious to go with the 
crowd in the canoes. We were told that the 
fashion of cats is a recent acquisition by these 
Mountaineers, and the cats were treated most 
kindly as pets, in marked contrast to the treat- 
ment of the dogs, who lead, indeed, a dog's life. 
The costumes were like those of their relatives 
at Les Isles des Corneilles, but some of the old 
men wore long skirt-like coats, and had their 
heads bundled up in red handkerchiefs, or 

163 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

faded pieces of coloured cloth against the 
weather. One little boy of three or four years 
wore a long fur coat with skin side out, and a 
hood that dangled at his back. When I tried 
to photograph him he screamed with terror and 
hid behind his mother. Doubtless he thought 
me an Iroquois. A pitiable cripple, an aged 
child with shrunken body and twisted ex- 
tremities, scurried prone like a hideous great 
spider over the sands, scaled the sides of a 
canoe and dropped into its depths. 

Pipe-smoking was well nigh universal, and 
not confined to the men, nor to the adults. I 
shall always remember the picture made on the 
background of this bleak shore by a buxom 
young matron, with the usual coquettish 
rosettes of hair before her ears and her jaunty 
red and blue liberty cap, a tight fitting red 
woollen bodice, green plaid skirt, so short as to 
fully display stout legs clad in thick woollen 
stockings of red and white and in embroidered 
moccasins, striding over the sands, smoking a 
pipe, and bearing, as carelessly and as easily as if 
they had been of feather-weight, a lusty papoose 
in her arms and a large pack on her shoulders. 

It was a busy and confusing scene, and one 

164 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

felt anxious that a child or bundle or dog should 
not be left behind in the hurry of embarkation. 
Their canoes were drawn up along the beach, 
and into these they hastily threw their bundles 
and deposited themselves, while the dogs and 
children scrambled in as best they could. I 
counted two men, four women, two small 
children, a papoose, a dog and a cat in one 
canoe, and the canoes were not large. The 
cat looked calmly over the gunwale at the 
alarmingly near-by water, the women smoked, 
chatted and laughed, while the men paddled 
skilfully but nonchalantly to the barge an- 
chored in the stream. There were four of these 
barges, and they were soon well loaded, the 
sails hoisted, and away they went with the 
strong wind and the swift current. Some of the 
canoes were towed, others hauled up on deck, 
and a belated canoe containing two boys, a 
large pack and an anxious dog was picked up 
without disaster by the last barge as it sailed 
along. They were off for their religious feast 
of the year. In religious matters at least it is 
certainly a short feast and a long famine with 
these Indians. Migrations, whether of bird, 
beast or savage, are always interesting, and 

165 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

the annual migration of the Montagnais Indians 
is not the least so. 

According to the annual report of the De- 
partment of Indian Affairs published in Ottawa 
in 1908, the number of Montagnais Indians for 
this strip of southern Labrador coast is 694; 
of these 76 come to the shore at Natashquan, 
241 at Mingan and 377 at Seven Islands. The 
numbers given by Hind for 1857 were 100, 500 
and 300 respectively. With the exception of 
a very few who are too old or feeble to travel, 
all of these Indians spend the greater part of 
the year in the interior, making their annual 
migration to the coast in May or early in June 
when the ice goes out of the rivers, and re- 
turning in August. Those whose brief summer 
residence is at Seven Islands generally reach 
the interior by the St. Marguerite or by the 
Moisie River, while the Mingan contingent 
ascend the St. John River, and, by a series of 
smaller streams and lakes and many portages, 
cross to the Romaine, up which they travel into 
the interior. The Indians coming to the mouth 
of the Natashquan use that great river as a 
highway into the interior. 

The early return of the Indians to the wilds 

166 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

in August is partly in order to ascend the rivers 
before they are frozen, and partly to be in time 
for the annual migration of the caribou, but 
it is only in the north that this migration takes 
place on a large scale, and here the Nascaupees 
spear the animals in great numbers in the lakes 
and rivers. Rabbits, ptarmigan, spruce par- 
tridges, trout, ducks and geese help out the 
larders, but the Montagnais are becoming more 
and more dependent on the flour and other 
provisions that they obtain in barter for their 
furs at the Hudson's Bay Company's Posts. 

Hind, quoting a former officer of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, says of the Montagnais: " Their 
country then abounded with the deer [caribou]. 
Porcupine were so numerous, that they used to 
find and kill (when travelling) a daily suffi- 
ciency for their food without searching for 
them. Beaver were also plenty, and the white 
partridge [ptarmigan] seldom failed to visit 
our shores yearly, about the commencement of 
December, even from the heights of Hudson's 
Straits. While at present the deer are ex- 
tremely scarce, porcupine almost wholly extinct, 
beaver very rarely to be got, and the white 
partridge is seen only every third and fourth 
167 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

year. Starvation was in those days unknown 
both to Montagnais and Nasquapees, but, these 
eighteen years past, some annually fall victims. 
At the time when the porcupine were so very 
numerous in the forest all over the country, and 
even in the woods lining the seashore, an Indian 
would then consider 50 pounds of flour a 
superfluous weight to carry with him to the 
woods where he intended to pass the winter, 
from his certainty of finding as many porcu- 
pines as he chose to kill, and other animals fit 
for food in proportion; but at present they 
have to carry in as much flour as they can, and 
those who penetrate far inland must carefully 
economize their provisions until such time as 
they reach the large lakes where fish are to be 
found. Another and very serious circumstance 
the Indian has to contend against, is the yearly 
decline of the furred animals to what they 
formerly Jiave been. With all his labours, 
trapping and hunting, he seldom can pay his 
debt at the Company's posts, and most often 
only meets part of his expenses, which are 
yearly on the increase." 

This decline in game is chiefly to be attributed 
to the extensive fires already mentioned, which 
168 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

have destroyed the forest and soil alike, and 
partly to the excessive killing by fire-arms. 

The chief occupation of the long season in the 
interior from August to May or June, besides 
the eternal search for food, is trapping of the 
fur-bearing animals, martens, beaver, lynx, 
fox, muskrat, mink and otter. In the pursuit 
of these and others of the family the Indians 
cover great distances, going at times not only 
as far as the Hamilton and Northwest River, 
the southern boundary of the hunting grounds 
of their cousins the Nascaupees, but even at 
times to the waters of the George River in 
Ungava. Occasionally, if they have had a bad 
season, and they are starving, a few come out 
for supplies in April, dragging their canoes over 
the ice or leaving them behind. Occasionally 
this early return to the coast takes place on 
account of their early success in obtaining a 
full supply of furs. 

During the winter they live in the conical 
wigwams already described. In case of death 
the body is usually brought to the coast to be 
given Christian burial, and the little graveyard 
by the Indian church at Mingan is crowded with 
169 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

wooden crosses, on which are written or rudely 
carved the names of the dead. 

At Mingan I had the best opportunity to 
observe these Indians as we spent a week 
there from the i4th to the 2ist of June, close 
to the Hudson's Bay Company's Post at the 
house of the old salmon- fisher of the place. The 
Indians had not all come out of the woods, but 
new families were arriving every day. The 
large kitchen of the salmon-fisher's house was 
an attractive place and was visited in the 
evening by fur traders, salmon-fishers from the 
mouth of the Mingan River, the clerks from 
the H. B. C. Post and Indians. The old salmon- 
fisher himself was a picturesque figure, tall 
and strong, slim and wiry, but slightly bent 
with age; his beard was long and white, his 
eyes blue and kindly. His wife was a dark, 
black-eyed woman, bright and intelligent, and 
they had a large family of children of all ages, 
speaking French among themselves, Indian 
frequently, and English as occasion demanded. 
The kitchen was a long, low-studded room whose 
centre of attraction was a large iron stove always 
filled with glowing logs. Suspended from the 
middle of the ceiling above the stove were 

170 




OUR HOST, THE SALMON-FISHER AT MINGAN, AND HIS OLD 
COMPANION. 




MR. J. A. WILSON, FACTOR AT THE H. B. C. POST AT MINGAN, ON THE STEPS 
OF THE COMPANY'S HOUSE BUILT BY MR. DONALD ALEXANDER SMITH, 
NOW LORD STRATHCONA AND MONT ROYAL. 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

wooden racks, generally decorated with drying 
stockings, mittens and moccasins. On hooks 
on the rafters were five guns of various makes 
and ages, the most formidable of which was a 
great muzzle-loader with a barrel three and a 
half feet long. Long benches were placed 
around the room for the convenience of the 
family and the visitors, and the conversation 
in the three different tongues was chiefly about 
salmon, although it may have wandered to 
other channels in the case of the blushing clerk 
and the eldest daughter. 

Mingan has an interesting history. The 
company of the One Hundred Associates, also 
called the company of New France, was founded 
in 1627 by Cardinal Richelieu and five partners. 
Under them was held the " Terre ferme de 
Mingan," which was described as extending 
from Cape Cormorant on the west to "La 
Grand Anse " or "La Baie des Espagnols " on 
the east, and two leagues back. This eastern 
boundary has been liberally interpreted by the 
company as Bradore, while the crown recently 
contended that it was Agwanus. In 1661, or 
nine years before the Hudson's Bay Company 
received its charter, a charter was granted to 

171 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Sieur Bissot de la Riviere for this seigniory of 
Mingan or Labrador Company as it was also 
called, and to this company the H. B. C. pays 
rent. The following notice is posted at Mingan : 

"Notice is hereby given, that the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany are the Lessees of the following section of land in 
the Seigniory of Mingan, from the Labrador Company, 
viz., 

" From the west bank of the Mingan River running in 
a Northwesterly direction along the sea-coast to the 
east bank of the creek commonly known as Patterson's 
Brook, situated about half way between Long-Point of 
Mingan and Mingan proper, and running due North, a 
distance of two miles from the sea-coast. 

" Any person found trespassing in the above defined land 
will be prosecuted according to law. 

"HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY 

"per M. R. GRAHAME." 

To avoid this rule and yet be able to do 
business with the Indians, an independent fur- 
trader has built a store house on piles between 
tides near the Indian village, and carries on a 
trade with the Indians from a point he claims 
to be on the high seas, and therefore outside 
of the Seigniory! Our Belgian friend accom- 
plishes the same purpose by anchoring his 
boat in the sound by Mingan, and trades with 
the Indians who bring out their furs in canoes ; 
"all is fair in trade and war! " 

172 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

Hanging in the vestibule of the little office 
of the Post were several pairs of snow-shoes, 
discarded for a brief season between snows. 
The Labrador snow-shoe or racquette is almost 
everywhere tailless or nearly so; in fact their 
outline is almost circular or only slightly ovoid, 
but they make up in breadth what they lack in 
length. Some of them, however, have short 
rounded tails and are appropriately called 
" beaver- tails." The absence of tails makes 
progress through scrubby woods and brush 
easier than where the ordinary elongated shoes 
are used, and the Labrador racquettes are par- 
ticularly adapted to the quick turns needed by 
those who hunt and tend traps. On that 
account they are very useful w r hen one is follow- 
ing and studying birds, for with these shoes 
one can easily turn completely around in a 
small space, while with the long ones a con- 
siderable amount of backing and filling is 
necessary, as well as careful attention to the 
tails of the shoes, during which process the birds 
may be lost to sight. I have found them very 
satisfactory. 

One of the buildings of the Hudson's Bay 
Company here at Mingan was built about 60 
173 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

years ago under the direction of Mr. Donald 
Alexander Smith, who was then the factor at 
this Post. Mr. Smith is now Lord Strathcona 
and Mont Royal, the head of this rich and 
powerful Company of Hudson's Bay. This 
historic house is not used now, as a larger one 
has since been built for the factor. It is a 
small single story square house, painted white, 
standing just to the eastward of the tiny office 
building, its platform surrounded by a neat 
white fence. The dark coloured roof with the 
usual upcurved edges is relieved by white 
dormer windows. A great knocker adorns the 
door, which has two small panes of glass set 
near the top. Lord Strathcona began his 
service for the Honourable Company as an 
apprentice at Rigolet in 1838, and served for 
thirteen years on the Labrador coast. I 
could not help picturing the possible future of 
the young blue-eyed, fair-haired clerk, but a 
year out from Scotland, who was tactfully 
managing the black-eyed, dark- haired Indians 
at the store-house, and I was amused to hear 
him conversing with them in their own language 
with a broad Scotch accent. He seemed to be 
particularly successful in his sales of a calicc 

174 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

that had won the hearts of the women, a real 
chef d'ceuvre in the calico line, for it was purple 
on one side and olive green with yellow spots 
on the other. The sales proceeded leisurely 
amid much talk and laughter. 

Like the Indians I enjoyed wandering about 
the store-house, for it was an interesting place 
and contained everything that heart could 
desire in these regions. Furs alone were missing, 
for these are the medium of exchange, and for 
these the store-goods were bartered by the 
Indians, and the furs are transported to Lon- 
don. I should dearly have liked to be present 
during the trading process between the factor 
of the Post and the Indians, but I was told that 
the rules of the Company required that no out- 
sider should be present not even another 
Indian. The beaver skin is still the standard 
of exchange at this Post in terms of which all 
other furs are reckoned. 

At the trading in the store, however, I was 
often present. The Indians are trusted im- 
plicitly, and are allowed to wander about the 
store, even in the absence of the clerk, and 
pick out what they like. Only once, the factor 
told me, was this trust misplaced, and it was 

175 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

only necessary to suggest that it might be the 
rule in future to lock the store except when the 
clerk was present. The square deal is ap- 
preciated by civilized and savage alike. 

When one thinks of the treachery and deceit 
that have been practised by the whites in 
America in their dealings with the Indians and 
of the degradation and death wrought by the 
white man's cupidity, his diseases and his 
whiskey, one can not but be filled with shame 
and remorse, that this, the noblest race of 
primitive men, should have been treated so 
vilely. The unusually fine character of the 
unspoiled Indian we are discovering when it is 
too late, although Catlin pointed it out long 
ago, and for many years the inhuman saying 
has been flippantly repeated that there is "No 
good Indian but a dead one." 

In former times the Indians coming from the 
interior erected their wigwams at Mingan near 
the trading post. Hind says. " Four hundred 
Montagnais had pitched their tents at Mingan, 
a fortnight before we arrived, there to dispose 
of their furs, the produce of the preceding 
winter's hunt, and to join in the religious 
ceremonies of the Roman Catholic . church 

176 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

under the ministration of Pere Arnaud." 
This was in July, 1861. In 1889 the Hudson's 
Bay Company, in order to make the place as 
attractive as possible for the Indians, and as 
an inducement to bring their furs to this Post, 
built a small wooden house for the Indians and 
another three years later. These proved so 
attractive that the rest of the village was put 
up, we were told, in the years 1901 to 1903. 
However successful these houses may have 
been in stimulating trade, the effect on the 
health of the Indians has proved far otherwise. 
Infectious diseases, such as influenza and 
tuberculosis, were unknown among the primi- 
tive Indians, who have therefore developed no 
immunity, but, on the contrary, are especially 
susceptible to them and quickly succumb. 
When infected from the whites, they retire, 
like all ignorant people under the same cir- 
cumstances, to their houses, and crowd to- 
gether in close overheated rooms with doors and 
windows shut. The houses become therefore 
hotbeds of infection, and the course of the 
disease is hastened to a fatal termination. 

Hind, writing of his visit in 1861, records 
the fact that the Indians who lingered on the 

177 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

coast soon lost their energy and bodily strength 
and became prone to attacks of influenza, 
consumption and rheumatism. He speaks of 
a party of fifteen Nascaupees who had visited 
the coast at Seven Islands two years before, 
to see the robe noir. Seven of these had died, 
four had gone back to their own wilds, and, of 
the four that remained, all were very weak 
and one died while he was there. Hind at- 
tributed the illness and deaths on the coast 
to the unaccustomed climate, not recognizing 
the true cause of infection from the whites. 
But on the coast, he says, " the damp pene- 
trates to his bones; he sits shivering over a 
smoky fire, loses heart, and sinks under the 
repeated attacks of influenza brought on by 
changes in the temperature." 

When my profession was discovered by the 
Indians, I was in frequent demand, and was 
asked to prescribe for several patients whom I 
found to be far advanced in consumption. A 
pleasanter case to remember was that of a 
young Indian who told me that for two months 
he could not see out of one of his eyes; it 
caused him no pain whatever, and his only 
regret was that he could see the girls only 

178 




THE LAST LEAF ON THE TREE, SAID TO BE IO4 YEARS OLD. 



THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 

through one eye instead of two. My interpreter 
for this gallant speech was one of the daughters 
of the salmon-fisher. As there was some slight 
redness of the eye, but more for the sake of 
giving the Indian the satisfaction of treatment, 
I presented him with some tablets for an eye 
wash. A few days later he reported that he 
had begun to see again in that eye ! 

That some of these people manage to survive 
the onslaught of the white man's germs of 
disease and live to a considerable age, was 
illustrated by an aged squaw at Mingan who 
was said to be 104 years old. The factor, 
Mr. Wilson, told me that up to within a few 
years she had spent the long winters with her 
people in the interior, but that increasing 
infirmities had at last compelled her to give 
up this strenuous life. She appeared to be 
still active mentally, and her small black eyes 
twinkled with intelligence in her sadly wizened 
face. When she walked she was bent like a 
bow, so that her chin almost touched her knees, 
and she reminded me of some Cape Cod women 
who are said never to die, but in the end to 
dry up and blow away like dead leaves. 



179 



CHAPTER VIII 

WINGS AND FEET IN THE AIR AND UNDER WATER 

" Mark how the feathered tenants of the flood, 
With grace of motion that might scarcely seem 
Inferior to angelical, prolong 
Their curious pastime! " 

Wordsworth. 

'"I" -V HE good priest at Esquimaux Point said 
that the devout could see the sign of the 
cross in the birds as they fly in the heavens. 
Our ideas of the flying birds may indeed be 
a conventional one, for their flight is generally 
so rapid that our impressions are often con- 
fused and incorrect unless our attention has 
been particularly called to some point. Thus 
in the case of the feet, artists and taxidermists 
alike generally represent soaring doves and 
eagles with their feet drawn up in front, and 
even excellent observers, who have not paid 
especial attention to the subject, are apt to 
agree in the accuracy of this stereotyped and 
conventional attitude. Now a little careful 

180 



WINGS AND FEET 

study of the familiar pigeon of our streets 
shows that in the case of the dove this view is 
an erroneous one. On rising from the ground 
the pigeon draws up its feet in front, it is true, 
but, as it gathers headway, the feet are drawn 
back and extended under the tail. In this 
position it soars or executes any flight more 
than a few yards. When it flies but a short 
distance it does not have time, or it does not 
take the trouble, to draw up its feet behind, but 
carries them in front to be ready to drop them 
when it alights. In quick turns I have seen 
them drop their feet a short distance from their 
tail, and once I saw one drop its legs so that 
they hung straight down for a few seconds, 
and were then extended behind again. In 
alighting the feet are thrown forward, generally 
at the last moment. 

In the case of the eagle and other birds of 
prey the fact that the feet are carried behind 
under the tail has been observed over and over 
again, yet when this fact was announced in the 
pages of the Ibis in 1894 and 1895 there was 
at first a hint of protest, but numerous good 
observers confirmed the statement. 

When the new United States twenty dollar 

181 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

gold piece appeared in 1907 with the design by 
St. Gaudens of an eagle in flight, its legs behind, 
objections were at once made. A writer in the 
Boston Transcript said: " Whoever saw an 
eagle in flight with its legs trailing behind it 
like a heron? " thus voicing the popular and 
conventional idea that the legs are carried in 
front. Although I have seen many wild hawks 
flying with their feet behind, sometimes trailing 
them with a distinct gap between the tail and 
the legs, for all the world like the St. Gaudens' 
design, my most satisfactory views have been 
those of ospreys at Bristol, Rhode Island, 
where the birds are semi-domesticated, for 
they build their nests on tall poles, erected for 
their convenience in barn yards, and allow 
inspection at close range. Here there can be 
no question but that they carry the feet behind 
in flight. 

Owls also dispose of their legs in the same 
manner as I have observed in a great horned 
owl confined in a flying cage, and in a wild 
barred owl seen flying about its nest. 

The same habits exist among the pheasants, 
grouse and partridges. I have not been able 
to see the feet in the rapid flight of the ruffed 

182 



WINGS AND FEET 

grouse and bob-white, but in the introduced 
ring pheasant I once watched a flock of young 
birds in flight whose only partly grown tails 
did not conceal the long legs of the birds that 
extended backwards. In side views of the 
splendid cock pheasants I have also seen the 
legs extended behind. 

In the case of the water birds that abound on 
the Labrador coast it is easy to see that the 
legs are carried behind, and this is the universal 
habit among all groups of this order. The 
puffin and sea pigeon with their brilliant scarlet 
feet make it plain as to their position in flight. 
The gulls habitually carry their feet behind, 
and in quick turns generally drop their feet 
pressed together, suggesting their use as a centre- 
board, for, as in a centre-board boat, quick turns 
with the board up are impossible, with it 
down these turns become easy. Gulls have also 
a habit of sometimes drawing up one or both 
feet in front. Sometimes the feet carried 
forward show plainly, at other times they are 
buried all but the toes which appear as dark 
nobs, and again they are entirely concealed in 
the feathers of the breast so that the bird 
appears to be destitute of feet. Birds with one 

183 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

foot concealed in front and one carried behind 
appear to have only one foot. It is possible 
that the birds do this to keep the feet warm, 
but I have observed the habit in mild weather. 

The dexterity with which the herons manage 
their ungainly legs, stretching them behind in 
flight, is familiar to all. I once saw a great 
blue heron attacked in mid-air from the rear 
by a screaming tern. The heron was so startled 
that it dropped for a moment its long legs, and 
stretched out and around its snake-like neck. 
It may be stated as a rule to which, as far as I 
know, there are no exceptions, that all water 
birds carry their feet behind in flight. 

It is probable that parrots, cuckoos and 
kingfishers all carry their feet behind, but very 
few observations have been made in these 
difficult cases. 

In the woodpeckers the feet are I believe 
carried in front, while instantaneous photo- 
graphs of humming birds show that in hovering, 
at least, the feet of this bird are also carried 
in front. 

In the great order of perching birds it would 
seem natural that the feet should be carried 
in front as they fly from place to place, so as 

184 



WINGS AND FEET 

to be ready to seize their perch, and as far as 
I know this is always the case. The crow is our 
largest common perching bird, but its black 
colour of plumage and feet alike make it 
difficult to observe the point in question. A 
crow in rising on the wing often lets its feet 
hang at first, and then draws them up in front 
in an exceedingly leisurely manner. When 
well under way the feet are close against the 
breast, and are held there I am inclined to 
believe, even in long flights, for I have several 
times observed crows from a point on a sea 
beach where I could follow their flight for a 
long distance, and, as they passed me, their 
feet were always in front. The feet are some- 
times dropped slightly so that daylight can 
be seen between them and the breast, or held 
so closely to the breast that only the clenched 
toes can be seen, and these in some cases are 
entirely buried in the feathers. If the bird 
had only been so obliging as to have white 
feet, these observations would have been much 
easier. 

I have also seen the feet when the birds were 
in full flight in the case of swallows, blackbirds, 
robins, the familiar house sparrow of the 

185 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

streets and in other perching birds, and they 
were always held in front. 

The modern study of birds by means of 
powerful prismatic binoculars and occasionally 
of telescopes reveals much that was concealed 
from the students that depended on the naked 
eye and the loaded gun, and those who were 
brought up in the " collecting age," unless they 
have fully adopted modern methods, are apt 
to look with some suspicion on those who use 
glasses. The student who leaves the gun at 
home or keeps it judiciously in the background, 
not only sees more with these glasses, but also 
with the naked eye, for the birds soon recognize 
the difference between the man with the gun 
and the man with the glasses, and behave 
accordingly, and this is a point that the old- 
time student does not appreciate. For years 
I never got nearer than a long gun-shot from 
an adult turnstone and never observed him 
for any length of time at that distance, but, 
since adopting modern methods, I have spent 
many interesting half-hours with these birds, 
at times so close that I could not focus my 
glasses on them, and have watched every detail 
of their actions in turning over seaweed and 

186 



WINGS AND FEET 

stones. The case of the Ipswich sparrow, a 
bird that breeds only at Sable Island and visits 
the sandy Atlantic shores in winter, is a striking 
illustration of the difference in the two methods. 
Formerly ornithologists made visits to the sea- 
shore dunes in late fall and early spring, and 
considered themselves fortunate if they flushed 
half a dozen of these birds at long range in a 
day's tramp, and succeeded in shooting two 
or three on the wing. Now the student watches 
them within a few yards, and is able to note all 
the peculiarities of markings and habits. I 
have tried both methods and I know whereof 
I speak. In a comparatively unexplored 
region like Labrador, however, it is well to 
have two strings to one's bow. 

Being burdened somewhat with a New Eng- 
land conscience, I am glad I began bird-study 
before the days of hand-books and Audubon 
societies, in the good old times when a gun was 
used for identification, for I think that course 
of study gives one a grounding that it is 
difficult to get otherwise. Nowadays there is 
no excuse for the beginner to use a gun, and 
there is no need of multiplying collections of 
bird-skins, but it should be impressed on all 
187 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

bird-students and their name is legion, both 
masculine and feminine that it is far better to 
be silent or confess ignorance than to affirm 
knowledge unless that knowledge is based on 
sound observation. It is to be regretted that 
too many ardent bird-students are not only 
lacking in powers of observation and in ap- 
preciation of the scientific value of truth, but 
also that they possess imaginations which 
lead them to see what the text-books have given 
them to expect. Above all they should avoid 
embarrassing ornithologists by recording in 
print imperfect and erroneous observations, and 
they should remember that by so doing they 
discredit not only themselves but the whole class 
of gunless observers. 

Turn we now, as dear old Professor Shaler 
used to say, to another subject. Instantaneous 
photography shows that birds extend the 
bastard wing just as they alight. The bastard 
wing consists of a few stiff feathers attached to 
the so-called thumb on the front edge of the 
bird's wing. Ordinarily it lies flat and is not 
seen, but just as the bird alights from a flight 
it is extended so as to be partially detached 
from the main wing. In the domestic pigeon 

188 



WINGS AND FEET 

I have often observed this with the naked eye, 
although I hesitate to record this observation 
for fear that someone who has been reading 
Munsterberg will say that I merely visualized 
what the photograph made me expect to see. 
It is an observation, however, that any one 
can make whose eyesight is ordinarily good. A 
bird comes sailing down from a roof, and, as it 
approaches the ground, the bastard wing 
becomes distinctly prominent, the whole wings 
are then flapped rapidly, during which it is 
impossible to observe them distinctly, and the 
bird drops to its feet. The natural explanation 
of this action of the bastard wing is that it is 
used to check the progress of the bird, to back 
water so to speak, but the bastard wing is so 
small that its power in this direction must be 
extremely slight. One might suggest, therefore, 
that the present bastard wing is but a vestige 
of its former self, and dates back to a time 
when its use was of value, or, to go back still 
farther in the family tree, one might suppose, 
perhaps fancifully, that the bird thus puts out 
its thumb as did its reptilian ancestors to 
grasp the perch to which it is speeding. 

The Labrador coast is a good place to study 
189 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

diving birds, for there are many and of numerous 
kinds to be found there. It is evident that these 
birds may be divided into two main classes, 
those that habitually use the wings alone under 
water, and those that use the feet alone. 
Those that use the wings make ready before 
they disappear below the surface by spreading 
or flopping them out, while the feet-users keep 
the wings tightly clapped to the sides, and they 
often execute graceful curves in diving, some- 
times leaping clear of the water. 

The puffin is a good example of the former 
class, and its wings are plainly to be seen in 
vigorous use as it goes under water, and it often 
comes out of the waves flying, only to return 
to the denser element again with the same 
method of propulsion. All the other members 
of the auk family dive in the same way. I 
have twice had excellent opportunities to watch 
dovkies or little auks swimming close at hand 
under water, and plainly saw them use their 
wings. The great auk, long since extinct, with 
wings reduced to flipper-like proportions, doubt- 
less advanced rapidly through the water by 
the action of these extremities only, for the feet 
in the living members of this group are not 
190 




ESCORT AMONG THE INDIANS AT MINGAN. 



WINGS AND FEET 

used for propulsion under water. The penguins, 
although entirely distinct from the auks, fly 
through the water with their extended flipper- 
like wings, and, from the testimony of those 
who have watched them in tanks, it is learned 
that the feet are not used. Thus Lea x says of 
these curious birds: "Their flight may be 
watched and studied in the large glass tanks 
at the Zoo. . . . With short, rapid strokes of 
its paddle wings it darts through the water 
leaving a trail of glistening bubbles behind, 
and shoots forward with the speed of a fish, turn- 
ing more rapidly than almost any bird of the 
air by the strokes of the wing alone, the legs 
floating apparently inert in a line with the 
gleaming body, or giving an occasional upward 
kick to force it to greater depths." 

One is apt to assume that " the trail of 
glistening bubbles " which comes from a diving 
bird are the expired air bubbles, but I am 
inclined to think that most if not all of this 
air is expelled from the feathers in order to 
make diving more easy or even possible. Some 
diving birds have the ability to sink gradually 
out of sight in the water with apparently little 

1 John Lea, The Romance of Bird Life, 1909, pp. 202-203. 
191 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

or no muscular effort, yet these same birds 
shot on the wing float on the surface when dead 
as lightly as feathers. Each body feather is 
governed by tiny muscles, and by their action 
the feathers can be depressed so that the large 
amount of air normally held between them is 
expelled, and the body loses its buoyancy. I 
was interested to try the experiment on a 
recently killed eider on this trip on the Labrador 
coast, and found that while the dead body 
floated high in the water, by expelling the air 
from the feathers and replacing it with water 
the bird sank so deeply that only a small 
fraction appeared above the surface. This 
simple experiment, therefore, explains the other- 
wise mysterious power of some water birds to 
sink in the water without apparent leg or wing 
action. After rising to the surface from diving, 
birds usually shake themselves as if to admit 
air to their feathers. 

Among the ducks, old squaws, scoters, and 
eiders, all common Labrador birds, plainly use 
their wings in diving. Once, while watching some 
old squaws sporting in the water and chasing each 
other on or just below the surface, I distinctly 
saw the wing of one of them cut the water from 

192 



WINGS AND FEET 

below like the fin of a great fish, and I have 
seen a surf scoter near at hand fly under water. 
It is a curious thing, when one stops to think 
of it, that some species of ducks like those 
named above should vigorously fly under 
water, while other ducks should keep their 
wings close to their sides and shoot about 
under water by the action of their feet alone, 
yet this seems to be the case. The redhead and 
the canvas back, the scaups, the whistler or 
golden-eye and the bufflehead all seem to dis- 
regard their wings under water and use the 
feet alone. This is also true of the mergansers, 
who always dive with the wings pressed closely 
to the sides. Edmund Selous, who has watched 
water birds from vantage points on the cliffs 
of the Shetland Islands, says: " The merganser 
dives like the shag or cormorant though the 
curved leap is a little less vigorous and swims 
like them, without using the wings. His food 
being fish, he usually swims horizontally, 
sometimes only just beneath the surface, and, 
as he comes right into the shallow inlets, where 
the water almost laps the shore, he can often 
be watched thus gliding in rapid pursuit." ' 

a Bird Watching, London, 1901, p. 153. 
193 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

The group of river ducks, on the other hand, 
which includes the teals, mallard, black duck 
and wood duck, are not skilled in diving but 
obtain their food by dipping their heads and 
necks below the surface, while their tails point 
to the zenith in the ardour of the pursuit. 
These birds as well as geese and brant do, 
however, occasionally dive in an awkward 
manner, and in so doing use both feet and 
wings. 

The family of the loons and grebes is a curious 
one and its members are characterized by 
possessing very muscular legs, the thighs short 
and stout, the lower legs long and provided with 
keels for the attachment of powerful muscles. 
The grebes have also a very large knee-cap. 
In these respects ihe group resembles the fossil 
Hesperornis, a toothed bird with wings repre- 
sented by mere vestiges, but one that was 
evidently strongly specialized for propulsion 
through the water by means of the feet alone. 
Now loons and grebes are expert divers, and, 
although they occasionally have been seen to 
use the wings when hard pressed, as a rule they 
appear to swim, and that too very rapidly, 
under water with the feet alone. Young loons, 

194 



WINGS AND FEET 

however, scramble away tinder water, using 
both feet and wings. 

Cormorants are famed for their ability to 
swim under water with great swiftness, and 
domesticated ones are used at the present day 
by the Chinese as catchers of fish, while a ring 
around the neck prevents the bird from profiting 
by its labours. Both when confined in tanks 
and wild in the sea this curious bird uses its 
feet alone for propulsion. Selous * says of 
these birds: " Others, whose young were still 
with them on the nest, although full fledged 
and almost as big as themselves, plunged, 
attended by these into the water. ... It 
was easy to follow these birds as they swam 
midway between the surface of the water and 
the white pebbled floor of the cavern, and I 
am thus able to confirm my previous con- 
viction that the feet alone are used by them in 
swimming, without any help from the wings, 
which are kept all the while closed." The 
American coot or mud-hen, a bird of the 
rail family, is a graceful diver, and, like the 
cormorant, it keeps its wings close to the 

*The bird Watcher in the Shetlands. London. 1905. 
P. 50. 

195 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

body. Selous, 1 however, says of the English 
moorhen, another rail, that he " may follow no 
fixed plan in his diving, for I have certainly 
seen him using his feet only under water, and 
I believe I have also seen him using his wings." 

Very young spotted sandpipers, the familiar 
teter-tail of beaches fresh and salt, sometimes 
dive when hard pressed, and in so doing use 
both wings and feet. The water ousel uses both 
wings and feet under water. 

It would seem, therefore, that with a few 
exceptions diving birds tend to specialize in 
two directions, either towards the use of 
the feet alone, or of the wings alone. The 
question naturally arises as to which line is 
superior, which has produced the swiftest 
diving bird, the line that has led to the 
use of the feet alone or that which has led to 
the use of the wings alone? It is evident that 
a method of diving which leaves the wings 
unimpaired in size or form for the use in the 
air is a desirable one, and that this is possible 
where the feet alone are used. In most fishes 
propulsion is from the rear by means of the 
tail, for the pectoral fins, which correspond to 

1 Bird Watching. London, 1901, p. 156. 
196 




PIERRE OF PIASHTE-BAI AND THE BEAVER, SHOWING WEBBED 
HIND FOOT OF THE BEAVER, AND " SKIN BOOTS " OF MAN. 



WINGS AND FEET 

the birds' wings, are used chiefly for balancing, 
and when the fish swims fast these fins are 
kept close to the sides. Among mammals the 
cetaceans have developed greatest speed in 
diving and swimming under water, and here 
also the tail is the propulsive power, while the 
anterior extremities are used chiefly for balanc- 
ing. The beaver, with its posterior extremities 
alone webbed, uses these only in swimming 
under water. The modern screw-propeller is 
superior to the old side-wheeler. 

In hesperornis the wing is a mere vestige, 
but the leg bones are of great strength. It is 
evident that hesperornis pursued its prey under 
water by means of the feet alone, and that 
through many generations it had gradually 
lost the use of the wings, which must have 
been, therefore, a hindrance rather than a 
help in its subaqueous flight. It had long since 
given up aerial flight. Loons and grebes, how- 
ever, although apparently allied to hesperornis, 
do at times, as we have seen, use their wings in 
addition to their feet under water, yet it seems 
to me probable from the evidence adduced that 
as a rule they progress by the feet alone. The 
young appear to use the wings as well as the 
197 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

feet habitually. These facts would seem to 
indicate that the method of posterior propulsion 
in loons and grebes has not been long developed 
nor permanently fixed, and that the young 
show the ancestral or primitive form of loco- 
motion. The close resemblance in the legs of 
the loons and grebes on the one hand, and 
hesperornis on the other, would suggest either 
a case of parallelism from similar functions, or 
that they were all descended from the same 
stock. In the " Birds of Essex County " ' I 
spoke of the loon as " approaching the wingless 
conditions." The present studies would, how- 
ever, lead me to believe that the loon, in per- 
fecting the method of posterior propulsion 
under water, has no need to reduce the size of 
its wings for use there. It can, however, with 
advantage increase their size, provided it does 
not use them under water, for the wings are 
now so small that on calm days it is unable to 
rise into the air. 

Cormorants on the other hand have for so 
long a time perfected the posterior propulsion 
method that they do not use the wings under 
water even apparently when young. In con- 

1 Birds of Essex County, Cambridge, 1905, p. 80. 
198 



WINGS AND FEET 

sequence they have been able to retain large 
wings for aerial flight. That they can develop 
great speed under water and are very expert 
fish-catchers is well known. 

The other line of e-volution, the subaqueous 
flight by anterior propulsion, or by the use of 
the wings alone, reaches its height in the 
penguins, and probably in the extinct great 
auk, two birds widely separated genetically 
but converging to the same result in this par- 
ticular. Both birds in developing speed under 
water by the use of the wings, reduced them 
in size to the proportions of seal's flippers, 
most markedly so in the case of the penguins, 
thereby showing that large wings are not only 
unnecessary, but even a hindrance in suba- 
queous flight. In attaining this end they were 
obliged to sacrifice aerial flight. This the 
penguins were able to do owing to the absence 
of land mammals in their antarctic breeding 
grounds. The same conditions existed for the 
greak auk at its chief breeding place in this 
country on Funk Island, until the arrival of 
that most destructive land mammal, the white 
man. 

The diving petrel of the Straits of Magellan 
199 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

is a bird that appears to be in danger of sacri- 
ficing aerial for subaqueous flight, and illus- 
trates the inconveniences of this line of evolu- 
tion. Nichol * says of this bird, after describing 
its short flights in the air and its diving: " In 
appearance it reminds one forcibly of the little 
auk. . . . The wings are very small and weak, 
the bird, doubtless, is losing the power of 
flight." 

In the case of the existing auks and of the 
other birds that habitually use the wings alone 
in diving, it would be interesting to determine 
whether they are able to progress under water 
as fast as those birds that use the feet alone, 
for the auks are trying to make the same tool 
work for two purposes, to propel them in the 
air as well as in the water. One is impressed 
with the imperfection of their wings for both 
purposes, when one watches a puffin en- 
deavouring to get out of the way of a steamer. 
First the bird dives and flies under \\ater. 
Then in alarm it rises to the surface and at- 
tempts to ascend into the air on its wings, but 
unless there is a strong wind to act on its small 
aeroplanes, it soon gives up the attempt and 

1 Three Voyages of a Naturalist, London, 1908, p. 160. 
200 



WINGS AND FEET 

/ 

flops down into the water again. Although it 
would be difficult to prove, it would seem to me 
reasonable to suppose that the compressed 
pointed body of the loon, with the air expelled 
from beneath the flattened feathers, would 
make faster progress by feet action alone, than 
by the wings or by the wings and feet com- 
bined, unless the wings were reduced to the 
proportions of flippers. It is possible that the 
occasional use of the wings observed in these 
birds may be explained by fright, which causes 
them to " lose their heads," and return to the 
ancestral form of progression, to a reptilian 
scramble so to speak, without increasing the 
speed of their progress. It could also be argued 
that the wings of loons are now so reduced in 
size that their use in emergencies under water is 
a help and not a hindrance. Experiments on cap- 
tive birds in tanks might determine these facts. 1 



persistent but futile efforts of the loons to rise 
from the water in flight during a calm on the approach of 
the steamer as described in the second chapter is, it seems 
to me, another illustration of the return to primitive 
methods during extreme fright. Aerial flight was doubt- 
less practised by the ancestors of the loons long before 
subaqueous flight, and in subaqueous flight it is reasonable 
to suppose that quadrupedal action antedated that of the 
feet alone. 

201 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

That loons are able to progress faster under 
water than on the surface I have concluded 
from such observations as the following: ' 
" Thus on one occasion I was watching a loon 
swimming about, dipping his head under 
water from time to time on the lookout for 
food. The cry of another loon was heard at 
a distance and my friend immediately dove 
in the direction of the other, and, appearing 
on the surface for a moment, dove again and 
again until he reached his companion. At 
another time on the Maine coast while watching 
a flock of young Red-breasted Mergansers 
swimming off the shore, I noticed a movement 
as of a large fish on the water outside. The 
mergansers at once flapped in alarm along the 
surface of the water towards the shore where 
I was hidden, and I soon saw that a loon was 
chasing them, following them under water." 
Theoretically a loon should be able to go faster 
under water than on the surface, for on the 
surface the bird is retarded by the waves in 
front and the eddies behind, and the faster it 
goes the more it is retarded by these factors. 
The subject of the resistance of submerged 

1 Birds of Essex County, 1905, p. 80. 
202 



WINGS AND FEET 

bodies has been exhaustively studied by naval 
architects, and it has been shown that a prop- 
erly shaped body completely submerged under 
ideal circumstances with the wave eliminated 
meets with little resistance besides friction. 
The fact that a loon when swimming rapidly 
on the surface is apt to depress its body in the 
water so that its back is awash seems to favour 
this contention. It may be argued that the 
bird does this to avoid observation or to escape 
being shot, but it certainly swims faster when 
thus submerged. Under water the diving bird 
has a great advantage in being able to assume 
a shape best adapted to cleaving the liquid 
medium. 

Incidentally it may be remarked that the 
loon, in perfecting its legs for use under water, 
has disabled itself for walking on the land, 
but as it usually builds its nest on or close to 
the water, it can well afford to sacrifice ter- 
restrial locomotion. 

The combined use of wings and feet, a 
reptilian form of progression, would naturally 
be found among birds that had not fully 
specialized in either direction. Among living 
birds the cormorant and the penguin represent 
203 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

the extremes of specialization for the posterior 
and anterior extremity respectively. Where 
either habit is not firmly established we should 
expect at times a return to the primitive 
method, and we should expect to find it in 
young birds. This is well shown in the case 
of the loon. We should expect to find it at 
all times in behinners in the art of diving, i.e., 
among birds whose ancestry in the diving line 
is not a long one. The mallard, the black duck, 
the moorhen, the spotted sand piper and the 
water ouzel may perhaps illustrate this con- 
tention. 

In conclusion the following tentative in- 
ferences from these preliminary studies on 
diving birds may be set down. 

i st. That progression by both the wings and 
feet under water in diving birds is the primitive 
method, and is therefore to be looked for 
among beginners and young birds. 

2d. That specialization towards the use of 
the wings alone leads to a diminution in the 
size of the wings, and finally to a form of bird 
that is flightless in the air; for wings of flipper 
proportions, too small for aerial flight, are 
more efficient than large wings for subaqueous 

204 




DWARFED SPRUCES DEAD AND ALIVE AT ESQUIMAUX ISLAND. 




ANCIENT LARCH AT QUATACHOO. 



WINGS AND FEET 

flight, as witness the great auk and pen- 
guins. 

3d. That specialization towards the use of 
the feet alone is probably best adapted for the 
most rapid progression under water, and this 
method may leave the wings undiminished in 
size for use in the air. The apparent exception, 
hesperornis, with powerful feet but with wings 
degenerated to vestiges through disuse, serves 
but to confirm the inference of the superiority 
under water of feet action alone. 



205 



CHAPTER IX 

SOME LABRADOR TREES 

" Arbores magnae diu crescunt; 
Una hora extirpantur." 

Curtius. 

T^NOS A. MILLS 1 has recently described 
"^ the incidents in the life of a giant yellow 
pine, in the stump of which he counted 1047 
rings. From this he concluded that the year 
of the great tree's birth was somewhere in 
the ninth century after Christ. A long and 
careful dissection and study of the fallen 
monarch that in life had attained a height of 
over a hundred and fifteen feet, and a trunk 
eight feet in diameter, revealed many secrets. 
The rings showed seasons of drought or cold, 
periods of prosperity and again of stress and 
injury. Lightning and fire left their indelible 
marks, as well as the effect of heavy winter 
snows; two imprisoned stone arrow heads and 

1 Wild Life on the Rockies. Boston, 1909, p. 31. 
206 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 

some rifle bullets suggested interesting inci- 
dents, and an imbedded stone on the cliff side 
of the tree together with fractures of roots that 
had occurred in the year 1811 or 1812 suggested 
an earthquake. 

Nothing of this spectacular sort did I find in 
my study of Labrador trees, but I had deter- 
mined on this trip to make as many sections 
of the trees as I could, and I had brought a 
saw for the purpose, because in my previous 
visit to Labrador I had cut down and sectioned 
a few of the dwarf specimens with the best 
instrument I then had, a sheath knife, and 
found they were all tough and some of them 
were surprisingly old and interesting. Thus: 
" A little larch that had successfully risen to 
the great height of nine inches in a gully, I 
found on sectioning and counting the rings 
with a pocket lens to be thirty-two years old. 
The massive trunk was three-eighths of an inch 
in diameter. A balsam fir with a spread of 
branches of twenty-seven inches, whose top- 
most twig was thirteen inches from the ground, 
showed fifty-four rings in a massive trunk two 
inches in diameter. Another balsam fir nine 
inches high and twenty-one inches in extent 

207 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

showed thirty-five rings in a trunk one inch and 
a quarter in diameter. A black spruce eleven 
inches tall and twenty-two in extent, with a 
trunk only one inch in diameter, had lived over 
half a century, showing fifty-two rings in its 
cross section. The sturdy little veteran wreaked 
his vengeance on me by making a great nick in 
the sheath-knife with which I laboured to 
dissect him and learn his secrets." x 

In this Labrador spring I counted the rings 
on the large stumps and in some of the smaller 
ones on the spot, but most of my studies are 
from sections that I cut and labelled, and 
afterwards studied at home, for the Labrador 
spring is so short. When the tree has grown 
rapidly the rings are wide and easily counted 
by the naked eye, but in most of the stunted 
Labrador trees the growth is so slow that a 
strong hand lens is necessary, and in some of 
the smaller, much stunted ones I made the 
sections with a razor, mounted them in a 
drop of oil, and counted the rings with the low 
power of a compound microscope. I found 
that careful smoothing of the section with a 
razor or sharp knife and oiling it brought 

1 Along the Labrador Coast. Boston, 1907, pp. 43-44. 
208 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 

out the rings more plainly and it was often 
possible by shifting around the circle to count 
the full number of rings, when in a direct line 
to the periphery from the centre, portions of 
the rings might be illegible. Pins used in the 
larger sections to mark off various points in 
the counting were also of help. Most of the 
sections were counted two or more times and 
an average struck in case of disagreement, so 
that I believe my counts are fairly accurate. 

I made in this way an examination of twenty- 
six trees, larches, balsam firs, and black and 
white spruces that varied in height from one 
and a half inches to fifty-five feet. The most 
stunted specimens, the ones that grew the 
slowest and were least in height, were to be 
found on the sea-shore and in the bogs. Be- 
yond the Mingan Islands the shore and par- 
ticularly the islands took on a more arctic 
appearance, and, in places exposed to the full 
fury of the wind, the trees were prone on the 
ground, although, even as far east as Natash- 
quan, trees of twenty feet in height were found 
close to the shore in fairly protected places. 
The bogs, with their deep sphagnum moss and 
acid waters, their underlying ice even in June, 

209 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

and their exposure to the full fury of all the 
winds that blew, appeared to be particularly 
difficult places for the growth of trees, yet it 
was evident that it was only by the slow growth 
through many years of these trees and bushes 
that the bog was consolidated and became fitted 
for the support of a large growth. The forest 
works in from the sides and extends in islands, 
so gradually that centuries must elapse before 
the progress is even noticeable. The truth of 
this statement is made probable by the follow- 
ing observations on trees of the bogs. Thus 
in one of the bogs on top of Esquimaux Island, 
a balsam fir whose trunk was three-quarters of 
an inch in diameter, whose height was twelve 
inches and the extent of whose branches was 
twenty-four inches showed by its rings a 
struggle of twenty-four years. A black spruce 
six inches high with a trunk one and one-half 
inches in diameter was fifty- three years old. 
Another black spruce nine inches high and 
one-half an inch in diameter was sixty-two 
years old. 

Larches are common enough in the bogs, but 
one must look carefully in order to pick up a 
little tree with a trunk one-eighth of an inch 

210 




LARCH TREE SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, FROM BOG AT ESQUIMAUX 
ISLAND' SLIGHTLY ENLARGED. 




PHOTOMICROGRAPH OF SECTION OF TRUNK SHOWING 

SIXTEEN ANNUAL RINGS. 
Photographs by Prof. E. C. Jeffrey and Mr. E. W. Sinnott. 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 



thick, a height of one and one- half inches and 
a spread of branches two inches across. Yet 
this was not a seedling, for sixteen years as 
shown by its rings under a powerful micro- 
scope had passed over its head. It seemed 
cruel to pluck up such a tree after it had been 
so well started in life, and tuck it into one's vest 
pocket. The other larches, and there were ten 
of them, that I measured, sectioned and 
counted from the bogs of Esquimaux Island 
gave the following figures: 



Height 
of 
tree. 


Extent 
of 
branches. 


Diameter 
of 
trunk. 


Rings. 


12 inches 


38 inches 


2 inches 


55 


3* " 


8 


I " 


42 


6 


30 " 


f " 


43 


5 " 


8 


I " 


31 


12 " 


24 


* " 


45 






* " 


38 


2 


2 " 


* " 


8 


3 " 


4 " 


i 


1 9 


2 " 


3 " 


A " 


10 


6 " 


18 


* ." 


40 



The lack of uniformity in growth is of course due 
to the many and complicated problems of 

211 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

environment, for no two of these trees were 
exposed to exactly the same conditions of 
sunlight, wind, depth of snow, soil, amount of 
water, etc. 

A larch that grew on the wind swept islands 
of Quatachoo, that was twenty inches tall 
and forty-five in extent, with a trunk one and 
one-half inches in diameter, had taken twenty 
years to grow. Another larch exposed to the 
winds of Esquimaux Island for one hundred and 
ten years had attained a height of three feet, 
a spread of eleven feet and trunk some two 
inches in diameter; and after all these years 
of struggle it was cut down by a traveller, but 
I trust its memory will long remain green. 
The only other larch I measured was a giant 
in a sheltered valley of an island of Quatachoo, 
and I scaled a steep rocky cliff by the shore 
and waded through a snow bank to my waist 
on the 2pth of May to take his photograph. 
A robin and a white-throat sang in this shel- 
tered valley while the surf thundered on the 
outer shore, and scuds of sea-fog drove over 
head, and in the stunted spruces close to the 
snow bank on the upper slopes a white-crowned 
sparrow, the aristocrat of his tribe, sang his 

212 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 

mournful song. The valley was picturesque 
in its rugged beauty and full of deep interest. 
This larch was the largest in a group of gnarled 
and twisted monarchs that must have defied 
the storms for many ages. He was still alive 
and the green buds of promise were appear- 
ing on his topmost boughs, which were fully 
thirty feet up in the air. At a distance of 
two and a half feet from the ground he meas- 
ured six feet in circumference. How I should 
have enjoyed counting his rings, which must 
have numbered many hundreds, but even if it 
had been possible to cut him down and smooth 
off his stump it would have been indeed sac- 
rilegious. May he live for many ages yet to 
come! 

On this same island, however, I did steel my 
heart and cut down a splendid spreading mat 
of verdure, a balsam fir that had grown com- 
paratively rapidly on a southern slope, but 
one that was so exposed to the gales from the 
gulf that it had reached a height of but three 
feet. One could walk over its compact top sur- 
face, which measured eighteen feet from side to 
side, but could not rest under the shadow of its 
branches unless one had been able to burrow 

213 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

into the ground like a fox, or flatten oneself 
out like paper. The trunk was four inches 
in diameter and contained sixty-seven rings. 

A balsam fir fifteen feet high and two and 
one-half inches in diameter had grown rather 
rapidly for nineteen years, then very slowly 
for fifty-four years, and rapidly again for the 
last six. One might infer that its neighbours, 
starting at about the same time, so surpassed 
it when it was nineteen years old, that for 
over fifty years the lessened sun-light made its 
growth slow and painful, but that six years ago 
a storm had laid so many of its companions low 
that it plucked up heart in the renewed sun- 
light and grew like a sapling again, only to 
be slain in its lusty seventy-ninth year by man 
the destroyer. And for what purpose? To 
count its rings forsooth! 

The stump of a favoured balsam fir at Es- 
quimaux Point that I examined showed twenty- 
one rings in a diameter of four and one-half 
inches. Its early life, however, had been rather 
difficult, for at the end of fifteen years it had 
reached a diameter of only an inch. Another 
balsam fir at Mingan had a diameter of trunk 
of eight inches, and had grown to be over thirty 

214 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 

feet in height in nearly a century, for I counted 
ninety-seven rings. Conditions were favourable 
for the first fifty years, but during the last 
forty-seven only a very little additional growth 
in girth was attained. 

A black spruce at Esquimaux Island, grow- 
ing with a multitude of others in close compe- 
tition for sun and air, attained a height of ten 
feet and a diameter of trunk of two inches in 
fifty-six years. In its early youth, its first 
forty years, it reached a diameter of only 
five-eighths of an inch. Another black spruce 
on the same island, one that had to contend 
on the shore with the winds of the gulf, ex- 
tended over six feet of ground, but grew to 
a height of only thirty- two inches. Its trunk 
was sturdy, three and three-quarters of an inch 
in diameter, and it contained seventy-seven 
rings. I counted two large black spruce stumps 
at Mingan ; the first was in a thicket close to the 
tree containing the pigeon hawks' nest, and 
had been, if as tall as that tree, about forty-five 
feet high. There were 121 rings in a circumfer- 
ence of thirty-nine inches, eighteen inches from 
the ground; about half the growth took place 
in the first forty years, after this progress was 
215 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

slow. The other tree was on the edge of the 
forest close to a marsh, where conditions for 
growth were so favourable that it had attained 
a diameter of fifty-eight inches in ninety-nine 
years. 

A white spruce stump close to the house at 
Mingan with a circumference of seventy inches 
two feet from the ground had lived 132 years; 
there were thirty-seven rings in the last inch. 
Another, a veteran, that had been cut down 
twenty inches from the ground on Mingan 
Island and left where it fell, had been fifty-five 
feet tall. Its stump sixty-five inches in circum- 
ference and eighteen inches in diameter was 
sound to the very centre, and showed 226 rings. 
Between its 5oth and iSoth years it had grown 
with uniform rapidity, as the rings were broad, 
but after that its growth was slow, and in the 
last three-fourths inch of its circumference it 
showed forty-six rings. If we suppose the tree 
had been cut down within a year, it must have 
begun life in the year 1683, or only three years 
after the founding of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. 

The distinction between the three different 
species of spruces is at times confusing. The 

216 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 

thick, sturdy yellowish green needles of the 
red spruce, the slender, more delicate blueish- 
black foliage of the black spruce, and the hand- 
some blue green branches of the white spruce 
are generally recognizable at a glance. One 
recognizes one's friends, however, not by noting 
that their eyes are black or blue, their noses 
are aquiline or otherwise, but by their general 
appearance, their distinctive air, by an in- 
tangible something one would be at a loss to 
define. I have known two brothers, one with 
black eyes, the other with blue, one with a 
beard, the other beardless, yet with a such 
strong family likeness to each other that they 
have been mistaken at a distance. The orni- 
thologist often recognizes birds by little traits 
that are unknown to the beginner, who is 
slowly mastering the recognized field marks 
of the books. The former knows a blue-bird 
in the dusk when the blue back and the red 
breast look all of one colour. In the same way 
the master of the subject of trees can often tell 
at a glance the species, although he may not 
be conscious of the steps by which he arrived 
at his diagnosis. To an amateur this is a con- 
summation devoutly to be hoped for, and in the 
217 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

case of the spruces, I am endeavouring to hasten 
the process of familiarity by planting one of 
each species within a few yards of my country 
house, so that I can watch them grow and be- 
come intimate with every stage in their prog- 
ress. With the same idea I have planted what 
I have fondly called my forest where I have 
devoted an acre of land to New England trees 
only, no foreign intruders are allowed. Here 
some fifty different species and many individuals 
are growing up. Only a few years ago one had 
to take care not to step on the forest in the 
grass, and my forest was the joke of my friends, 
but now the trees are rapidly extending above 
my head, and the birds of the air delight to 
lodge in their branches, for after all the birds 
are at the bottom of this scheme, but inci- 
dentally I am learning much of trees. Until 
one is perfectly familiar with the general 
habit, the intangible family air of the different 
species, it is a good plan to learn some special 
field marks. The long cones of the white 
spruce are of course distinctive. In the red 
and black spruces the. cones look much alike, but 
in one species the cones generally fall off every 
year, in the other they persist for years. I have 
218 



SOME LABRADOR TREES 

been confused like the old lady and her indigo 
as to these cones until I invented the very simple 
mnemonic : black bind, red reject their cones. 
Labrador trees could tell some very inter- 
esting stories if they could only talk, but they 
teach one lesson at least, that one cannot judge 
of age by size, looks are indeed deceptive. 



219 



CHAPTER X 

SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

" Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchent." 

Pascal. 

'TTVHE Labrador Peninsula, like a mighty 
* sponge, holds much water in its meshes, 
frozen into flinty ice it is true during the greater 
part of the year, but abundantly fluid during 
the brief summer season. As one cruises along 
the southern coast line in spring, one passes a 
series of watercourses large and small, each 
bearing out into the green waters of the Gulf 
its dark brown floods laden with tree trunks 
and evergreen branches. Even at a distance 
of two or three miles from shore, the less dense 
fresh water is often distinct from the heavier 
sea- water which it overlays, and a curious 
effect is produced by the churning up of the 
green sea-water, so that it contrasts strongly 
in the steamer's wake with the tea coloured 
fresh water on either side. 

All the rivers are frequented by trout and 
220 




THE OLD SALMON-FISHER OF MINGAN TENDING HIS NETS. 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

nearly all by salmon, and although these 
southern rivers are leased by sportsmen for 
fly-fishing, the majority of the salmon are 
caught not for sport but as a business in nets. 
For some distance to the east of Seven Islands 
there is a salmon-net at every mile mark along 
the sandy shore. At the Moisie River a large 
salmon-fishery is in operation. At Mingan 
the Hudson's Bay Company sets several nets, 
the old salmon-fisher with whom we stayed had 
four or five more along the beach and at the 
island opposite, and two Gaspe* men, camped 
at the mouth of the Mingan River, set six or 
seven more. Nets at the mouths of rivers are 
allowed if they do not extend more than one 
third of the way across. With all these nets to 
intercept the salmon on their way up the Mingan 
River to spawn it would seem as if few would 
escape, yet the owner of the river was just 
beginning his fly-fishing season as we left, and 
the fishing was generally good in the pools below 
the falls. We were told that at times the falls 
were black in places with the fish, tirelessly 
trying again and again to surmount them. 
We saw none there on June 2ist but it was 

still rather early in the season. 
221 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Salmon were plentiful at the mouth of the 
river, however, and it was always interesting 
to watch the men take the splendid great fish 
out of the nets, and pack them in snow to await 
transportation by steamer to Quebec. The 
nets were generally supported by upright poles 
which extended out at right angles with the 
shore to a distance of two or three hundred 
yards. V-shaped trap nets were placed at 
intervals at right angles to the main net on 
the side from which the salmon came; the 
opening to the trap was on the shore side, as a 
bewildered fish always strikes out into deeper 
water when he fears capture. In their struggle 
to escape they are securely caught by the gills 
in the meshes of the net. Cartwright in his 
poetical epistle on Labrador says: 

"The Salmon now no more in Ocean play, 
But up fresh Rivers take their silent way. 
For them, with nicest art, we fix the net; 
For them, the stream is carefully beset; 
Few fish escape : We toil both night and day. 
The Season's short, and Time flies swift away." 

He spread his nets across the whole river! 

Napoleon A. Comeau, the veteran naturalist 

and hunter of the north shore of the Gulf of St. 

222 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

Lawrence, for forty-nine years guardian of the 
Godbout salmon river, has written several 
chapters on the salmon in a recent interesting 
book. 1 He says that these fish move in from 
the deeper waters of the gulf each year about 
the middle of May to the shores on both the 
north and south sides. To the west of Mingan 
the salmon follow the coast up the St. Law- 
rence River; at Mingan and below they follow 
the coast to the eastward. All are intent on 
entering the rivers to spawn, and this entrance 
begins about the loth of June and continues 
to the end of July. They remain in the estu- 
aries of the rivers for some time before fighting 
their way up the swift current and through 
the rapids and falls of the rivers. The sites 
chosen for spawning, which takes place in 
September and October, are clear gravelly 
bottoms where the current is fairly swift. In 
the spring the salmon are in the best of con- 
dition, fat and silvery, but towards the end 
of October they are dark in colour and ema- 
ciated and the males show " a snout like a pig 
with an immense hook on the under jaw." " A 

J Life and Sport on the North Shore of the Lower St. 
Lawrence and Gulf, Quebec, 1909. 
223 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

considerable proportion of the salmon that 
spawn early enough, that is to say before 
the rivers freeze over, return to the sea 
the same fall. But a very large number winter 
in the rivers and the lakes drained by them. 
These are the fish that come down the rivers 
in the spring as soon as the ice breaks up and 
until the spring freshets are over." These are 
called kelts or lingards. While the salmon in 
October are dark and emaciated, the kelts 
emerge in April with shining scales, a change 
which Comeau believes due to a process of 
moulting the old scales and reproduction of new 
ones. 

The newly hatched fry are called parrs, which 
" pass into the smolt stage in their third and 
fourth year, going out of the rivers in August 
and September and sometimes in October." 
In October they range in weight from half a 
pound to a pound and a half. The next season 
they ascend the rivers in July, August and 
September under the name of grilse, weighing 
then three to five pounds, still small enough 
to run through the regulation salmon-nets with 
a mesh of five inches. 

Rivers polluted by saw-mills or in other 

224 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

ways are avoided by spawning salmon, while 
rivers, like the Manitou, with falls of such a 
size that the fish are unable to ascend them, al- 
though there is much good spawning ground 
above, are also avoided. Eventually these 
rivers will be treated as are similar rivers in 
Norway, where fish ladders are built enabling 
the fish to pass by the falls. 

Comeau gives some interesting figures show- 
ing that contrary to the usual belief the catch 
of salmon has increased over thirty per cent, 
of late years. Thus the average yearly catch 
of salmon for the whole of the Province of 
Quebec for the years 1896, '97, '98 was 685,000 
pounds, for 1906, '07, '08 over one million 
pounds. He also presents some records of 
fly-fishing on the St. John and Moisie Rivers. 
During the season of 1871, five sportsmen be- 
tween June 23d and July i8th caught with 
the fly 416 salmon having a total weight of 
4,755 Ibs. ; the largest fish weighed 26 Ibs. 
In 1869 the result of 16 days' fishing with the 
fly by one man on the Moisie was 138 salmon 
weighing 2,413 Ibs., or an average of nearly 
17 1-2 Ibs.; the largest fish weighed 37 Ibs. In 
1871 the records of three rods in the Moisie was 

225 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

325 fish weighing 5,789 1-2 Ibs., averaging about 
1 8 Ibs. apiece; the largest fish in this case 
weighed 34 Ibs. 

During our stay at the old salmon-fisher's 
at Mingan we saw something of the river of this 
name, and we paddled up the three navigable 
miles of its course to where it emerges from 
the high land of the interior, and falls some 
thirty feet over the Laurentian rocks to the 
level of the sandy shore-plateau. Except for 
the large volume of water, for the setting in the 
dark forest and the background of the mysteri- 
ous highland of the interior, these falls do not 
call for any especial mention. Below the falls 
the stream is one of considerable beauty, gen- 
erally about a quarter of a mile wide, flowing 
through the elevated plateau by banks of wind- 
blown sand and spruce forests and bordered 
by alders and birches. 

Just back of the Hudson's Bay Company's 
Post the river is rapidly wearing away the 
sand cliffs of the right bank, but, rebounding, 
it pursues a long S-curve to the sea. The char- 
acter and extent of this curve is shown by the 
fact that by one path from behind the salmon- 
fisher's house the distance to the river is about 

226 




THE MINGAN RIVER BACK OF THE H. B. C. POST. 




NEST OF THE PIGEON HAWK. 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

two hundred yards, by another, a straight 
path by the telegraph wires, the river lower 
down is reached at a distance of over a mile, 
while along the beach to the mouth of the 
river the distance is about three-fourths of a 
mile. The continual wearing back of the right 
bank by the impact of the river at the summit 
of the curve threatens the little settlement 
between it and the gulf, and it would not be 
difficult to calculate when the river will break 
through at this point, and wash the Honour- 
able Hudson's Bay Company's Post into the 
sea. 

We were casting our flies for trout one day 
from a sandy beach at the mouth of the Mingan 
River when two competitors appeared in the 
shape of a pair of seals, loups marines, 
wolves of the sea the habitants call them, and 
indeed they are nearly right both from a bio- 
logical and practical point of view. It was a 
pretty sight to watch their gambols, as with 
arched backs they would rush above the sur- 
face, and then disappear, or would throw them- 
selves half out of water with a mighty splash 
in the excitement and enjoyment of the chase. 
I tried hard to see the trout in their jaws, but 
227 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

the seals were too quick for me. The fish im- 
mediately ceased striking, and evidently skulked 
in alarm. I was only too glad, therefore, on 
hearing the cries of a pigeon hawk, to lay down 
my rod and follow the bird until it plainly in its 
great anxiety pointed out its nest. This was 
situated about twenty-five feet from the ground 
in a tall black spruce, and was built of dry 
sticks and thickly lined with soft rootlets, 
small twigs and strips of soft bark, and it con- 
tained five thickly spotted, chocolate-brown 
eggs. Both parents flew about with rapidly 
quivering wings uttering their sharp vibrating 
ki ki ki; the voice of the smaller male was dis- 
tinctly higher pitched and less harsh than that 
of his larger mate. From time to time they 
swooped down with great fury and swiftness 
at the intruder, but always glanced up before 
reaching him. 

The Romaine River, one of the largest rivers 
of the southern part of the Labrador Peninsula, 
empties into the Gulf of St. Lawrence half way 
between Mingan and Esquimaux Point. At 
some distance from the coast it forms the most 
important highway into the interior, and is 
annually used by the majority of the Mon- 

228 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

tagnais Indians. As the lower part of its 
course is interrupted by numerous rapids and 
falls, the Indians ascend the St. John River 
and portage, with aid of a series of lakes and 
small streams to the Romaine, where its waters 
flow more smoothly. Low, 1 who has followed 
this route, says of the Romaine below the place 
at which the portage-route leaves it: " Noth- 
ing is known of the river for over fifty miles 
below this point, except that it is quite im- 
passable for canoes, probably on account of 
long rapids with perpendicular rocky walls, 
where portages are impossible. Nothing but 
the absolute impossibility of passing up and 
down this part of the river would induce the 
Indians to make use of the present portage- 
route between the Romaine and St. John Rivers, 
which is the longest and worst of those known 
to the writer anywhere in north-eastern Canada. 
Careful inquiries from a score of. Indians met 
coming inland afforded no information con- 
cerning this part of the river, which has never 
been descended by any one so far as known." 

1 A. P. Low, Geological Survey of Canada. Report on 
explorations in the Labrador Peninsula, Ottawa, 1896, p. 
170. 

229 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

This point in the Romaine River where the 
known leaves off and the unknown begins is 
about 75 miles in a straight line from the sea 
according to Low's map, or about 100 miles by 
the river. The number of portages from the 
Romaine to the St. John River, according to 
Low, is thirty-one, " and their combined length 
aggregates nineteen miles and a half." The 
water part of this route between the two rivers, 
made up of lakes and small streams, aggre- 
gates some forty miles in length. The diffi- 
culties of this long portage must be great, but 
it only serves to emphasize the fact that the 
lower course of the Romaine is impas- 
sable. 

Cabot gives an interesting derivation 
for the name of this river, a derivation 
very different from the apparent one of Italian 
origin. He says: "Its Indian name ' Alimun,' 
meaning difficult, has passed through a re- 
arrangement of sounds unusual in the ad- 
justing of Indian names to French organs 
of speech. From * L'Alimun ' to ' La Ro- 
maine ' the transition is easy, surprisingly 
so, considering that no less a feat is involved 
than the introduction of the full rolling r 
230 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

into a language which has not the r-sound at 
all." ' 

Although we caught a glimpse from the 
steamer of the Romaine River as it empties 
into the sea, our most satisfactory and inter- 
esting acquaintance with it was in the wilder- 
ness north of Esquimaux Point, for here the 
river flows from east to west parallel with the 
coast. Our search for the Romaine was made 
on July nth, a day on which many of the 
smaller birds had arrived, and winter was 
changing to summer, a day when the tempera- 
ture climbed above 60 at noon, although it 
registered only 48 Far. morning and night. 

The path from Esquimaux Point starts at the 
crucifix behind the village, and goes north 
through the spruce and balsam woods, woods 
that were stunted by frequent cutting. We 
soon came to a bog, the familiar bog of Labra- 
dor, overflowing with moisture, a great sponge 
of sphagnum moss and reindeer lichen, inter- 
spersed with clumps of Labrador tea and laurel 
and alder, and with scattered larches and 
spruces, so dwarfed and prostrate as to scarce 

Labrador, by W. T. Grenfell and Others. New York, 
1909, p. 193- 

231 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

rise above the moss. The botany of these bogs, 
plains or tundras, whatever one may choose to 
call them, always interested me and helped on 
in the difficult work of traversing them. Bog 
trotting, forsooth, bog trudging, in truth, 
for when one sinks at every step nearly to the 
knee in the wet, elastic moss, one wishes for 
wings or perhaps snow-shoes. Audubon in a 
letter to his wife from this coast written July 
23, 1833, says: " Think of Mosses in which at 
every step you take you sink in up to your 
knees, soft as velvet, and as rich in colour." 
Over four of these bogs we passed, each 
larger than the last, and we crossed inter- 
vening ridges grown up to woods. In one place 
there was a bare, sandy ridge, the edge of a 
raised beach, but little changed since its ele- 
vation above sea level. 

In the bogs were numerous ponds of all 
sizes from an acre to a square mile or two in 
extent. These ponds represent the contest 
between the force of water and of the growth 
of vegetation. It is evident that these plains 
were once the sea, and as the land rose and the 
sea was cut off they became great shallow 
fresh water lakes, around and in which the bog 

232 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

growth was constantly pressing. Now some 
of the plains are filled with vegetation, in others 
the ponds remain with everywhere mossy and 
bushy edges, which are constantly striving 
to gain foot hold waterward. In places, es- 
pecially on the sheltered sides, it is evident 
that vegetation is conquering the water, ex- 
tending out in spots in floating islands over the 
surface. On the opposite side, exposed to the 
waves created by the strong, prevailing winds, 
the vegetation is in places undermined and 
falling in. That the bog will eventually win 
in this battle is only too evident. Then in turn 
the bog gives way to the evergreen forest grad- 
ually creeping in, the way paved by a growth 
of bushes which help to consolidate the spongy 
mass. 

In one of the small ponds of a bog was a tiny 
islet, on which was a mass of goose down. Peer 
as we might we could not see the goose eggs 
that we were sure were concealed in this mass, 
and it was useless to attempt to wade or swim 
to the island, for the water, although clear on 
top and but a few inches to a few feet deep, 
was filled with flocculent peaty mud below of 
uncertain depth. However, a general photo- 

233 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

graph from a distance of the pond and islet 
and nest was taken, and this was sufficient to 
show the fact that Canada geese still nest near 
the southern Labrador coast. We saw eight 
or ten geese that day, some of whom honked 
cheerfully while others appeared to be nervous 
at our approach, and it was probable that 
more nests were concealed in the neighbour- 
hood. 

The last ridge we crossed that day was of 
considerable extent and thickly wooded, and, 
although threaded with several paths which 
were evidently used in winter wood cutting, 
there was no sign of a path over the extensive 
bog beyond. Hitherto we had been guided 
by an occasional stake, but here there were 
none. However, we determined to press on 
due north towards the rocky ridge of mountains 
which appeared no nearer than when we started, 
marking carefully the point where we left the 
woods, near some limestone cliffs that faced the 
inland sea of moss, just as the cliffs of Es- 
quimaux Island face the tides that flow be- 
tween them and the shore. Some time, if the 
upheaval still continues, Esquimaux Sound 

will be replaced by moss. 

234 




FALLS OF THE MINGAN. 




THE ROMAINE RIVER NORTH OF ESQUIMAUX POINT. 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

This was the most extensive bog of all, and 
although we were occasionally encouraged by 
dog signs which showed that we were going 
in the direction taken by the dog-sledges in 
winter, we had begun to be very sceptical 
as to the existence of the river at all, for 
we had trudged on for five hours, and we had 
been told that the river was only five miles off. 
These, however, were winter miles with a foot- 
ing of ice and snow for fast-running dogs. 
Suddenly right before us, sweeping across our 
path was the river, and this view alone well 
repaid us for all our efforts. There was a 
sudden drop in the tundra, a big snowbank, a 
fringe of birches just leafing out in delicate 
green, and waving their yellow tassels of cat- 
kins to the breeze, a few spires of spruces almost 
black in comparison, and then, but a stone's 
throw away, and forty or fifty feet below us, 
the mighty river, dark blue but flecked with 
whitecaps, flowing swiftly to the westward. 
Its breadth was about a third of a mile, and 
beyond stretched a great plain of dark green 
spruce forest, the typical forest of the Hud- 
sonian zone, dark, impenetrable, mysterious. 
A small winding branch stream entered the 

235 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

main river almost opposite. Beyond the 
forest plain was a wooded ridge of hills, and 
beyond this at a distance I could not even 
guess, was the eternal ridge, the foreguard 
of the rocky heights of the interior, a ridge 
blue and gray and white. 

To the east there was a glorious view of the 
river flowing swiftly towards us for two or three 
miles, and issuing from the forest to the north. 
Here and there on either side of the river were 
low white sand-banks, their whiteness making 
a beautiful foil for the dark green spruces and 
blue water. Near at hand, on the south side of 
the river above the fringe of birches which 
skirted the edge, was a forest of tall gaunt 
spruces, a few giants standing out bare and 
leafless save for a tuft of dark green which 
crowned their summits. Below us to the west 
the river was parted by a wooded island, and 
the roar of the rapids on either side came to our 
ears like the surging of a mighty wind. Above 
the blue sky was flecked with fleecy clouds, 
and great cumuli were boiling up from the 
mountains in the north. 

We climbed down over the snowbank into the 
wet, tangled forest below, but could not approach 
236 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

the water on account of the thick fringe of 
alders, so we scaled again the bank, and found 
a warm sunny spot just below the edge, where, 
sheltered from the chilly wind which blew 
across the tundra, we could feast our eyes on 
the river to our heart's content. Close at our 
feet the snowbank still held many trees and 
bushes in its fetters. They were still leafless, 
while those below were clothed in the green 
of early summer. A larch near at hand, bent 
and twisted by the weight of many winters, 
had just emerged black and bare from the 
winter's blanket, yet it already showed on its 
topmost branches a promise of faint green buds. 
In the narrow valley below another larch hid 
its black branches under a green veil, and re- 
joiced in its strength. Near the snow drift 
the ground was naked, or brown and sere, 
while a few feet away it was clothed in the 
delicate green of young grasses and tender 
herbs. The bank above my head was blossom- 
ing with the white flowers of the cassandra, 
while the purple buds of the andromeda and 
the pale yellows once of the Labrador tea 
were just ready to open. In all three of these 
the leaves were fully out, for they are ever- 
237 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

green, and had remained from the previous 
summer. 

A redstart, the " little torch " of the Cubans, 
and a magnolia warbler, gems of beauty which 
to the uninitiated would appear to be birds of 
the tropics only, were flitting about among the 
treetops, constantly expressing their love and 
joy of life in songs. That of the redstart was 
" sibilant and insistent," that of the magnolia 
warbler recalled the famous words veni, vidi, 
vici. A lonely loon was swimming in the 
surges below and then rose and flew into the 
dark forest beyond. 

The snowbank, the soft, tender birches and 
larches, the mysterious, mighty river, the 
dark, trackless forest, the distant mountains, 
the shadowy high land of the north, the land of 
the ptarmigan, the caribou and the Indian, 
all made a picture I shall never forget. The 
spirit and the charm of wild beauty and mys- 
tery pervaded it all. 

It was possible to enjoy all this ethereal 
beauty and mystery, and yet to be of the earth, 
earthy, and I hold that there is no shame in the 
latter, for we enjoyed a dinner of the best on this 
glorious day. After some erbsewurst soup, 

238 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

hot in the frying-pan, a kindly provision of 
circumstances which forcibly, and at times 
painfully, checks too much haste, we were able 
to eat our cake as well as to keep it, for we 
partook of a Labrador spruce partridge whose 
skin we preserved as a specimen, and topped 
off oh ! ye gods with what we were pleased 
to call chocolate ice cream a mixture of 
scraped sweet chocolate and snow. 

As we returned over the tundra a sudden cold 
wind swept down on us from the north bearing 
with it a few drops of rain. Four geese flew 
low against the blast, and, setting their wings, 
alighted on the margin of a lakelet, where they 
kept up a continuous conversational honking. 
Two great black-backed gulls soared over head, 
and the roar of the river was intensified in the 
gusts. Gaining the first forested ridge, we 
looked back to the mocking mountains which 
appeared nearer than ever, as the north wind 
had cleared the atmosphere. As we approached 
our little village at the end of the day, we were 
so fortunate as to see a pair of marsh hawks, 
sailing over a bog, a bird that was recorded by 
Audubon from Labrador and by only one other 
observer, for Stearns obtained a specimen there 

239 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

nearly thirty years ago. Our expedition to the 
Romaine River was well worth while. 

The Moisie River is an old Indian route into 
the interior, by way of an east branch of the 
Cold Water River, Lake Ashuanipi and the 
Ashuanipi River, Lake Petitskapau and the 
Grand River. It was the Moisie River that 
Henry Yule Hind ascended in 1861, and of 
which he published in 1863 a most interesting 
work in two volumes entitled: " Explorations 
in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula, the 
Country of the Montagnais and Nasquapee In- 
dians." Hind began the ascent of the river 
by canoes on June loth, 1861, and, after many 
difficulties and trying portages, reached on 
July 2d, by way of the east branch, the height 
of land 2,240 feet above the sea, and over a 
hundred miles from it in a straight line. On 
his return he ran some of the six formidable 
rapids and, on reaching the mouth of the Moisie 
early in July, he says "we .... took up our 
quarters under the hospitable roof of Mr. Holli- 
day, the lessee of the Moisie Salmon Fishery," 
which is continued by the sons who also 
own the line of mail steamers to this day. 

I was glad to see the mist of the mighty falls 

240 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

of the Manitou River rising up in the dark 
forest as we steamed along the coast, even if I 
could not see the falls themselves, which are a 
mile and a half from the shore. The river is the 
third or fourth in magnitude on the coast, and 
the falls, which make a sheer descent of 1 13 feet, 
must be of considerable grandeur and beauty. 
Hind relates that the " Manitou River takes 
its name from the following incident, which is 
often described in Montagnais wigwams to 
eager listeners never weary of repetition. About 
200 years ago, when the Lower St. Lawrence was 
first visited by the Jesuits, the Montagnais 
were at war with the Souriquois or Micmacs 
of Acadia, who inhabited the south shore of the 
St. Lawrence and the country now called New 
Brunswick. A large party of Micmacs had 
crossed over the estuary of the St. Lawrence at 
its narrowest point and coasted towards Seven 
Islands, but not finding any Montagnais there, 
they descended during the night-time to the 
Moisie, and thence to the Manitou River, down 
which stream a few Montagnais bands were 
accustomed to come from the interior to the 
coast, to fish for salmon and seals. The Micmacs 
landed some miles before they reached the 

241 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

Manitou River, hid their canoes in the woods 
and stole towards the falls of the Manitou, to 
lie in ambush until the Montagnais should 
descend to the portage. The Montagnais knew 
their strength, and in the dim morning light 
began the fight at once, and after severe loss 
succeeded in killing or taking all but the leader 
of the Micmacs' band, a noted warrior and 
conjuror, and one whom the Montagnais were 
most anxious to take alive. Finding escape 
hopeless, he sprang to the edge of the cataract, 
and, crouching behind a rock, began to sing 
a defiant war-song, occasionally sending an 
arrow with fatal effect at those who were bold 
enough to show themselves. The Montagnais, 
sure of their prey, contented themselves with 
singing their songs of triumph. The Micmac 
chief and conjuror suddenly jumped upon the 
rock behind which he was hidden, and apt. 
preached the Montagnais, telling them to 
shoot. But the Montagnais wanted their 
prisoner alive, so they let their arrows rest. The 
conjuror next threw away his bows and arrows, 
and invited them to come and attack him with 
their knives. The Montagnais chief, anxious 
to display his courage, rose from his conceal- 

242 




FALLS OF PIASHTE-BAI RIVER. 




NEAR THE FOOT OF THE FALLS. 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

ment, knife in hand, and, throwing away his 
bow and arrows, sprang towards the Micmac, 
who, to the amazement of all beholders, re- 
treated towards the edge of the rock over- 
hanging the falls, thus drawing his enemy on, 
when, with sudden spring, he locked him in a 
fatal embrace, and, struggling towards the 
edge of the precipice, leaped with a shout of 
triumph into the foaming waters, and was in- 
stantly swept away over the tremendous cata- 
ract, which has since borne the name of the 
conjuror's or the Manitousin Falls." 

On the 28th of May we paddled and rowed in 
a modified or " evolved " canoe up the Piashte- 
bai River. A mile from the bay brought us to a 
considerable expansion of the river, and, had 
it not been for our guide, we might have spent 
many hours in searching the shores of this lake 
for the continuation of the river above. As 
it was we were shown the river where we least 
expected it, flowing for a mile through a 
drowned muskeg, and then emerging from the 
forest with rapid course. The swift current 
finally prevented further progress, and, landing 
on the right bank near an old bear trap, we fol- 
lowed through the thick spruce woods an Indian 

243 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

portage path that soon began to ascend the 
rocky barren hills we had seen before us. This 
path ends on the high land at a small lake from 
which the river discharges, and throws itself 
in a broken fall of great beauty down a hundred 
and fifty feet or more into the forest below. 
Although the falls are not a sheer descent, but 
form an angle of about forty-five degrees, the 
effect is grand, as the great volumes of white 
waters come bounding down the decline, ap- 
pearing to burst and throw themselves thirty 
or forty feet into the air in their progress. 
The setting in the wild forest added much to 
the beauty of the scene, for, with the exception 
of the faintly marked Indian portage-path, 
there was no sign of man to be found, there 
was no park, no " path to view the falls." By 
gradually working my way through the thick 
spruces and birches that grew luxuriantly in the 
constant spray, I managed to reach a point of 
advantage at the foot of the falls. Both the 
air and the fallen tree on which I stood were 
quivering and throbbing with the pulse-beat 
of the cataract, which roared loudly in my ears, 
and the trees swayed with the force of the blasts 
of air and spray. The leaping, spouting waters, 

244 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

plunging down with a front of over a hundred 
feet, contract to half this width at the foot and 
take an abrupt turn to the right to form the 
rapids and whirlpools below. 

All the rivers were not large, and we spent 
many happy hours bird-watching and explor- 
ing in the neighbourhood of an attractive stream 
near Esquimaux Point. Inquiring of our good 
friend the government doctor stationed at this 
village as to its name, for the stream was not 
noticed on the chart, he modestly confessed 
that the villagers called it La Rivikre du Doc- 
teur, because he kept a canoe on it in summer 
above the rapids, and fished it for trout. As 
we frequently dined on its bank we occasionally 
cast a fly, but the waters were still too cold with 
melting snow, and we never beguiled a trout 
from them into the pan. I can testify not 
only to the coldness of its waters, but also to 
the swiftness of its current and the sharpness 
of its limestone bed, for interesting birds had 
an annoying habit of flying to the opposite 
bank. My companion, more thoughtful than I, 
had provided himself with hip rubber boots, 
but he generously paid the penalty by act- 
ing the part of the old man of the sea, on 

245 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

the rare occasions when we did not lose each 
other. 

Perhaps the most frequent and certainly the 
most prominent bird song heard near this river 
was that of the fox sparrow. Its wonderfully 
clear flute- like notes came forth from the 
spruces at all times of day, delivered with a 
great precision, and with a mastery of tech- 
nique that can scarcely be rivalled in the bird 
chorus. One who has heard only the imperfect 
songs of this bird in its brief passage through the 
eastern States, and before the ecstasy of its 
passion has been attained, can not realize the 
intensity and scope of its love utterances in its 
breeding home. It was a song that one could 
not but admire for the beauty and richness of 
its performance, but at the same time one felt 
that it lacked the charm, the soul, the spirit- 
uality or whatever one may call it that applies 
so forcibly to the divine song of the hermit 
thrush or the simpler melody of the white- 
throated sparrow, songs of which one never 
tires. 

Sometimes the brightest gems are buried in 
obscure and unexpected places. In one of the 
scientific publications of the Boston Society 

246 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

of Natural History for the year 1883, the follow- 
ing by Mr. William Brewster, who paid a flying 
visit to southern Labrador in 1881, more clearly 
expresses these thoughts, and well describes 
the song of the fox sparrow and its settings: 
" What the Mocking-bird is to the South, 
the Meadow Lark to the plains of the West, 
the Robin and Song Sparrow to Massachusetts, 
and the White-throated Sparrow to northern 
New England, the Fox Sparrow is to the bleak 
regions bordering the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 
At all hours of the day, in every kind of weather 
late into the brief summer, its voice rises among 
the evergreen woods filling the air with quiver- 
ing, delicious melody, which at length dies 
softly, mingling with the soughing of the wind in 
the spruces, or drowned by the muffled roar 
of the surf beating against neighbouring cliffs. 
To my ear the prominent characteristic of its 
voice is richness. It expresses careless joy and 
exultant masculine vigour, rather than delicate 
shades of sentiment, and on this account is 
perhaps of a lower order than the pure, passion- 
less hymn of the Hermit Thrush ; but it is such 
a fervent, sensuous and withal perfectly- 
rounded carol that it affects the ear much as 
247 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

sweet-meats do the palate, and for the moment 
renders all other bird music dull and uninterest- 
ing by comparison." 

Another small stream, yet of considerable size, 
was one whose distant roaring added to the 
charms of the little protected harbour among 
the Isles des Corneilles, where we had cast 
anchor. This stream, this River of the Crow, 
for such I suppose was its name, gave me but 
a glimpse of its rushing, turbid waters as it 
came pouring down through the spruce forest, 
whose melting snows were silently adding to 
its volume. From these dark and tangled 
evergreen thickets not only here but also along 
the whole coast, a wonderfully varied and de- 
lightful bird-song would emerge at frequent 
intervals and at all times of day. Like most 
of the inhabitants of this coast the bird spoke 
French, and, with great clearness and insistence, 
it would frequently and repeatedly call tout 
de suite. At least so it seemed to me, but per- 
haps it was because of my recently acquired 
sensitiveness to the French language, for in 
Newfoundland and other English-speaking 
countries I had never noticed this French 
phrase. It would also say loudly and clearly 

248 




BOG ENCROACHING ON POOL AND FOREST ENCROACHING ON BOG. 




SPRUCE FOREST, SNOW-BANK AND THE RIVER OF THE CROW. 



SOME LABRADOR RIVERS 

pop-a-teet, sweet sweet, or repeat the sweet, sweet 
continuously for minutes at a time. These and 
many other notes were but the preludes or in- 
terludes to the real song which varied with the 
singer or his mood, but, in what I deemed its 
classical form, consisted of three parts: the 
first faint and lisping, suggestive of the black 
and white warbler; the second clear and flute- 
like recalling some of the notes of the robin, 
while the third part, the climax, is a wonderful 
succession of delightfully musical triplets with 
rising inflection. One might imagine that not 
one, but several birds were thus performing, 
or if there were but one performer, he would 
be at least as large as a bullfinch. This wonder- 
ful singer, the ruby-crowned kinglet, is, however, 
about the bigness of one's thumb, and how he 
manages to get so much melody out of his little 
frame, or so much inspiration from a wilderness, 
is to me an unexplained mystery. 

While the eastern Labrador coast is conspic- 
uous for its rocky headlands, its deep harbours 
and narrow fiords, this portion of the southern 
coast is equally conspicuous for its long reaches 
of sandy shores, its coastal plain and its barrier 
j mountain range, and while the drainage on the 

249 



A LABRADOR SPRING 

eastern coast concentrates the chief part of its 
floods at one point, the Grand River in Hamilton 
Inlet, the southern coast is remarkable for the 
number and size of its rivers, which pour out at 
frequent intervals along the shore. These 
rivers are, with but trifling exceptions, still 
unknown by the white man except at their 
mouths where they are leased for salmon-fishing, 
and, although they lie at our doors, their op- 
portunities for exploration and adventure still 
remain unheeded. 



THE END. 



250 



Index 



NOTE. The scientific names of the birds and plants are 
given after their common names. 

Acadia, 64. 

Acadians, 64, 65. 

Acadians, Religion of, 73-81. 

Agriculture, 70, 71. 

Alder, Speckled (Alnus incana), 13, 18, 237. 

Andromeda (Andromeda glaucophilla) , 16, 237. 

Aspen (Populus tremuloides) , 46. 

Audubon, 26, 125, 129, 232, 239. 

Auk, Razor-billed (Alca tor da), 58, 128. 

Avens, Mountain (Dryas integrifolia), 22. 

Bake-apple, see Cloudberry. 

Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea), 15, 19, 210, 213-215. 

Barge, 105, 165. 

Battle Harbour, 152. 

Bay, Piashte-bai, 115, 117. 

Bay of Seven Islands, 37. 

Bay, Yellow, 121. 

Bay, Washtawooka, 123. 

Bearberry (Arctostaphylos Uva-ursi and A. alpina}, 17. 

Beaver, 115, 116, 167. 

251 



INDEX 

Bendire, Charles, 101. 

Betchewun, in. 

Billiards, 143, 144. 

Birch, Canoe (Betula alba), 14, 19, 37, 46, 235. 

Bird Song, Evolution of, 27. 

Bissot, Sieur de la Riviere, 41, 172. 

Blanche, Monseigneur Gustave, 77. 

Bluebird (Sialia sialis), 12. 

Bog, 15, 24, 48, 63, 209, 210, 231-233. 

Bonnycastle, Sir Richard, 96. 

Boudrot, Ferman, 65. 

Boulders, Glacial, see Erratics. 

Brant (Branta bernida), 38, 39. 

Brass bracelet, 115. 

Brewster, William, 98, 247. 

Burgomaster, see Gull, Glaucous. 

Burrows of puffin, 127. 

Cabot, John and Sebastian, 40, 41. 

Cabot, W. B., 150, 161, 230. 

Calli on trees, 19. 

Canoe, Indian, 104, 120, 165. 

Cartier, Jacques, 39, 40, 152. 

Cartwright, Capt. George, 13, 32, 130, 131, 152, 222. 

Cartwrights, Three modern, 130-148. 

Cassandra (Chamaedaphne calyculata} , 16, 237. 

Catlin, George, 176. 

Cats, 162, 163, 165. 

Church of St. Peter, 69, 74-76. 

Clark City, 38. 

Cloudberry (Rubus Chamaemorus), u, 26, 49. 

Coastal plain, 49, 123, 226. 

Collins, Robin Company, 54. 

252 



INDEX 

Cod, 71, 73- 

Comeau, N. A., 222-226. 

Cook, Capt., 41. 

Cormorant, Double-crested (Phalacrocorax auritus), in- 

113, 117, 118. 

Cornel, Dwarf (Cornus canadensis), 16, 49. 
Corpus Christi, Feast of, 78-81. 
Corte-Real, Caspar, 41. 
Courtship of black duck, 95, 96. 
Courtship of eider, 84-89. 
Courtship of golden-eye, 89-95. 
Courtship of some Labrador birds, 83-103. 
Courtship of ruffed grouse, 98, 99. 
Courtship of spruce partridge, 100, 101. 
Courtship of ptarmigan, 99, 100. 
Courtship of puffin, 96, 97. 

Cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum), 14, 20, 127. 
Crepes, 124. 
Currant (Kibes triste, also R. prostratum and gooseberry, 

R. oxycanthoides), 13, 20. 

Dogs, Eskimo, 134. 

Dogs, Indian, 163. 

Dress of Indians, see Indians, dress of. 

Dress of French inhabitants, 43, 71, 75. 

Duck, Barrow's golden-eye (Clangula islandicus} , 94, 141. 

Duck, Black (Anas rubripes), 95, 132. 

Duck, Eider (Somateria dresseri}, 63, 84-89, 107, 114, 159. 

Duck, Harlequin (Histrionicus histrionicus) , 119. 

Duck, Long-tailed (Harelda hyemalis), 52, 53. 

Duck, Golden-eye (Clangula clangula americana}, 89-95. 

Eel-grass (Zostera marina'), 38. 
Egging and eggers, 159. 

253 



INDEX 

Eider, see Duck, Eider. 

Eider-down, 159. 

Elevation of the land, 109, 123, 232. 

Erratics, Glacial, 47. 

Eskimos, 151, 152. 

Esquimaux Point, 13, 65-82. 

Eudist fathers, 77. 

Falls of the Manitou River, 240-243. 

Falls of the Mingan River, 226. 

Falls of the Piashte-bai River, 244, 245. 

Falls of the Riviere Blanche, 53. 

Ferland, Abbe, 81. 

Fires, Forest, 46, 149, 168. 

Fishermen, 67, 73, 74. 

Fish-flakes, 54. 

Fishing boats, 42, 54, 72, 73- 

Flies, 32. 

Flight song, 49. 

Flycatcher, Least (Empidonax minimus}, 27. 

Flycatcher, Yellow-bellied (Empidonax Haviventris} t 26-30, 

32. 

Foxes, Black, Breeding of, 136-140. 
Frazar, M. Abbott, 125. 
Fur-trader, 115, 169, 172. 

Gannet (Sula bassand), 54, 58, 59- 
Gaspe, 37. 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 39- 
Glacial phenomena, 37, 47, 48, 61. 
Goldthread (Coptis trifolia), 16, 20. 
Goose, Canada (Branta canadensis), 114, 234, 239. 
Granitic rocks, 37, 49, 118. 
Grenfell, Dr. W. T., 68, 106, 126. 
254 



INDEX 

Grilse, 224. 

Guillemot, Black (Cephus grylle}, 62. 
Gulf of St. Lawrence, 36. 
Gull, Glaucous (Larus glaucus}, 51. 

Gull, Great black-backed {Larus marinus), 63, 109-111, 
239- 

Hakluyt, 33, 39. 

Harrington, 126. 

Havre des Sauvages, 122. 

Hawk, Marsh (Circus hudsonicus) , 239. 

Hawk, Pigeon (Falco columbarius), 228. 

Hearn, Capt, 126. 

Hind, Henry Yule, 44, 149, 150, 166, 167, 176, 240. 

Holliday Brothers, 50, 240. 

Horned Lark (Otocoris alpestris), 45. 

Hubbard, Mrs. Leonidas, 150. 

Hudson's Bay Company, 42, 59, 167, 170-175, 216. 

Hylas, 17. 

Ice, 24, 25. 

Indians, Algonquin, 151. 

Indians, Diseases of, 177-179. 

Indians, Dress of, 155-157, 163, 164. 

Indians, Dwellings of, 157, 158, 177. 

Indians, Iroquois, 151, 152. 

Indians, Migration of, 166. 

Indians, Montagnais, 149-179, 229, 241-243. 

Indians, Nascaupee, 151, 167. 

Indians, Religion of, 160, 161, 165. 

Indian Trading House, 174, 175. 

Island of Anticosti, 49. 

Island, Bald, 127, 128. 

255 



INDEX 

Island, Charles, 108. 

Islands of the Crow, see Isles des Corneilles. 

Island, Esquimaux, 17, 21, 61-63, 108. 

Island, Faux Pas, 109. 

Islands, Perroquets, 58. 

Island, Hunting, 108, in. 

Island, Little St. Charles, 128. 

Islands, Mingan, 59. 

Island, St. Genevieve, 60. 

Island, Sea-cow, 108. 

Isles des Corneilles, 114, 153- 

Jay, Blue (Cyanocitta cristata), 141. 
Jolliet, Louis, 41. 
Junco (Junco hyemalis) , 30. 

Juniper (Juniperus communis var. depressa and 7. hori- 
zontalis), 15. 

Kelt, 224. 

Kinglet, Ruby-crowned (Regulus calendula}, 30, 248, 249. 

Kingbird (Tyranus tyranus), 26. 

Kneeling posture, 120, 157. 

La Belle Marguerite, Cruise of, 103-129. 
Labrador Company, 172. 
Labrador Fur-trading Co., 124. 
Labrador Peninsula, Definition of, 36. 
Labrador Tea (Ledum groenlandicum), n, 16, 231, 237. 
Language, French, 43, 65-67. 
Language, Indian, 170. 
Larch (Larix laricina}, 14, I9 210-213, 237. 
Lark, Horned, see Horned Lark. 

Laurel (Kalmia polifolia and K. angustifolia}, 16, 48, 231. 
256 



INDEX 

Legs in traps, 133. 

Lichens, 15, 46, 47. 

Limestone, 17, 22, 60, 61, 62, 234. 

Lobsters, 113, 122, 137. 

Long Point, 58. 

Loon (Gavia immer), 51, 52, 162, 238. 

Loss of hair, Story of, 124, 125. 

Low, A. P., 44, 49, 150, 151, 229. 

Lucas, F. A., 59. 

Margot, see Gannet. 

Marigold, Marsh (Caltha palustris}, 20. 

Martial, 104, 105, 106, 120. 

Maryland yellow-throat (Geothlypis trichas), 31. 

Mathias, 104, 105, 107, 115, 121. 

Mica mine, 117. 

Mills, Enos A., 206. 

Mingan, 59, 170. 

Mingan, Seigniory of, 41, 171, 172. 

Modern bird-study, 186-188. 

Moisie, 50. 

Mosquitoes, 32, 33. 

Mountains, 38, 43-50, 234, 236. 

Mountain Ash (Pyrus americana) , 14, 20. 

Mount St. John, 44, 58. 

Murre (Uria troille}, 132. 

Musquarro, 160, 161. 

Natashquan, 20, 123, 124. 
Nest of Canada goose, 233, 234. 
Nest and eggs of double-crested cormorant, 112, 113. 
Nest and eggs of eider, 114. 
Nest and eggs of golden-eye, 90. 
257 



INDEX 

Nest and eggs of great black-backed gull, 109, 1 10. 
Nest and eggs of spruce partridge, 129. 
Nest and eggs of pigeon hawk, 228. 
Nest and eggs of puffin, 127. 

Old Squaw, see Duck, Long-tailed. 
Omelet, 116, 117. 

Orchid, Calypso {Calypso bulbosa), 21. 
Ox, Magpie, 54-57- 

Parr, 224. 

Partridge, Hudsonian spruce (Canachites canadensis), 100, 

101, 129. 

Pashasheeboo, 122. 
Perroquet, see Puffin. 

Phalarope, Northern (Lobipes lobatus), 109. 
Pipit (Anthus rubescens), 30, 45. 
Pitcher-plant (Sarracenia purpurea), 15. 
Plongeur, see Duck, Golden-eye. 
Plover, Piping (^Egialitis meloda), 125. 
Porcupine, 167, 168. 
Priests, 76-80, 125, 160, 161. 

Primrose, Mealy (Primula farinosa var. incana), 22. 
Protection to nesting birds, 159. 
Ptarmigan, willow (Lagopus lagopus}, 45, 141, 167. 
Puffin (Fratercula arctica), 58, 96, 97, 127, 128. 
Purple finch (Carpodacus purpureus}, 49. 

Quatachoo, 118. 

Raquettes, see Snow-shoes. 
Raspberry, Arctic (Rubus arcticus), 30. 
Raven (Corvus corax principalis} , 62. 
258 



INDEX 

Red-osier (Cornus stolonifera}, 14, 20. 

Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla), 18, 21, 31. 238. 

Refrigerating plant, 141. 

Rhodora (Rhodora canadense}, 48. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, 171. 

River, Agwanus, 122. 

River, Crow or Corneille, 113, 248. 

River, Grand or Hamilton, 46, 150. 

River, Grand or Sandy, 53. 

River, Little Natashquan, 123, 124. 

River, Magpie, 54. 

River, Manitou, 225, 240-243. 

River, Mingan, 30, 45, 221, 226, 227. 

River, Moisie, 50, 166, 225, 240. 

River, Nabesippi, 122. 

River, Natashquan, 125, 160, 166. 

River, Piashte-bai, 243-245. 

River, Romaine, 18, 24, 121, 166, 228-240. 

River, St. Marguerite, 37, 166. 

River, St. John, 151, 166, 225, 229. 

River, St. Lawrence, 37. 

River, Shelldrake, 54. 

River, Thunder, 54. 

Rivers, Some Labrador, 220-250. 

Riviere Blanche, 53. 

Riviere Du Docteur, 245, 246. 

Robes noirs, Les, see Priests. 

Robin (Planesticus migratorius), 14, 30, i7- 

Ross, Dr., 42. 

Ruffed grouse, Drumming of, 08, 99- 

Sails, Dyed, 105. 
Saint Cuthbert, 159- 

259 



INDEX 

Salmon, 50, 221-226. 

Salmon-fisher's house, 113, 170. 

Salmon, Migration of, 223-225. 

Salmon Nets, 221, 222, 224. 

Salmon, Yearly catch of, 225. 

Sand dunes, 125, 126, 162. 

Sandpiper, Spotted (Actitis macularia), 107. 

Saxifrage, Mountain (Saxifraga oppositifolia), 17. 

Scoter, Surf (Oidemia perspicillata) , 193. 

Sea-birds, Extermination of, 158-160. 

Sea-pigeon, see Guillemot, Black. 

Seals, 123, 134, 227. 

Selous, Edmund, 97, 193, 195, 196. 

Seal Rock, in. 

Seven Islands, 36, 42. 

Sexual selection, 89, 97. 

Shechootai, see Cloud-berry. 

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), 12. 

Sleeping-bag, 107. 

Smolt, 224. 

Snow, 11, 14, 19, 21, 23, 30, 50, 114, 235, 237. 

Snowberry (Chiogenes hispidula), 16. 

Snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), 14, 30, 132. 

Snow-shoes, 173. 

Sparrow, Fox (Passer ella iliaca), 14, 30, 80, 107, 114, 246- 

248. 

Sparrow, Lincoln's (Melospiza lincolni), 14, 32. 
Sparrow, Tree (Spizella monticola), 114. 
Sparrow, White-crowned (Zonotrichia leucophrys}, 14, 114. 
Sparrow, White-throated (Zonotrichia albicollis), 14, 30, 

107, 114, 132. 
Sphagnum, 15, 25, 231. 
Spring, A Labrador, 11-35. 

260 



INDEX 

Spruce, Black (Picea mariana), 15, 210, 215, 216, 217. 

Spruce, Red (Picea rubra), 15, 217. 

Spruce, White (Picea canadensis), 15, 124, 216, 217. 

Stearns, W. A., 239. 

Strathcona, Lord, 174. 

Sun-baths, 35. 

Submersion of the land, 48, 49. 

Swallow, Bank (Riparia riparia), 108, 109. 

Swallow, Tree (Iridoprocne bicolor), 162. 

Temperature, 24, 26, 34. 

Tern, Caspian (Sterna caspia), 125. 

Tern, Common (Sterna hirundo), 122. 

Thayer, A. H., on Concealing-coloration, 89. 

Thrush, Hermit (Hylocichla guttata pallasii), 30, 80, 132. 

Tickle, 50, 121. 

Toads, Trilling of, 17, 18. 

Traps, 133, 243. 

Trees, Some Labrador, 206-219. 

Tremblay, Dr. J. E., 104. 

Trout, 220, 227. 

Tundra, see Bog. 

Turner, L. M., 99. 

Village, An Acadian, 64-82. 

Violet, White (Viola incognita), 20. 

Wallace, Dillon, 150. 
Walrus, 41, 108. 

Warbler, Black-poll (Dendroica striata), 30, 31. 
Warbler, Magnolia (Dendroica magnolia), 21, 31, 238. 
Warbler, Nashville (Vermivora rubricapilla) , 31. 
Warbler, Wilson's (Wilsonia pusilla), 31, 49. 
261 



INDEX 

Watcheeshoo, 119. 

Whale Factory, 38. 

Whales, 50, 51. 

Wilson, J. A., 46, 149, 179. 

Whitbourne, 33. 

Willow (Salix groenlandica, S. vestita, S. anglorum, S. 

Candida}, n, 20. 
Wing, Bastard, Use of, 188, 189. 
Wings and feet in the air and under water, 180-205. 
Wood pewee (Myiochanes virens}, 26. 
Wood-pulp, 38. 
Wren, Winter (Nannus hiemalis), 32. 



262 



